Quotes from Gerald Durrell

they say that when you get old, as I am, your body slows down. I don't believe it. No, I think that is quite wrong. I have a theory that you do not slow down at all, but that life slows down for you. You understand me? Everything becomes languid, as it were, and you can notice so much more when things sre in slow motion. The things you see! The extraordinary things that happen all around you, that you never even suspected before. It really is a delightful adventure, quite delightful.

when they had all forgathered in England for the first time since World War II, they should be treated to something approaching a blizzard. It did not bring out the best in them; it made them more touchy than usual

Lawrence, clad in a roll-top pullover of the type usually worn by fishermen (several sizes too large for him), was standing by the window sneezing wetly and regularly into a large scarlet handkerchief.

I would awake early, breakfast hurriedly under the tangerine trees already fragrant with the warmth of the early sun

you get forests of almond and walnut trees, casting shade as cool as a well, thick battalions of spear-like cypress and silver-trunked fig trees with leaves as large as a salver.

That August, when we arrived, the island lay breathless and sun-drugged in a smouldering, peacock-blue sea under a sky that had been faded to a pale powder-blue by the fierce rays of the sun.

Up in the hills, in the miniature forests of heather and broom, where the sun-warmed rocks were embossed with strange lichens

The shallow sea in the bays was butterfly blue, and even above the sound of the ship's engines we could hear, faintly ringing from the shore like a chorus of tiny voices, the shrill, triumphant cries of the cicadas.

and the handsome women and girls with velvet black eyes

the whole thing guarded by a tall, thick hedge of fuchsias that rustled mysteriously with birds.

as round as the moon.

As we left the road and made our way up the hillside through the olive groves sparkling with light and shade, coloured with a hundred wild flowers, I stopped to pick some anemones for Mother. While I gathered the wine-coloured flowers

said Mother vaguely.

setting all the beetles that were tied to it buzzing sleepily on the end of their strings like a flock of captive emeralds.

I thought we were going to have chops,' complained Larry aggrievedly. 'I spent all morning getting my taste buds on tiptoe with the thought of chops. What happened to them?' 'I'm afraid it's the owls, dear,' said Mother apologetically. 'They have such huge appetites.' Larry paused, a spoonful of curry halfway to his mouth.

I lay in the garden in the shade of the tangerine trees and devoured the book

Are we having a plague of owls?' Larry inquired. 'Are they attacking the larder and zooming out with bunches of chops in their talons?

Roger and I would squat in the sweet-scented myrtles and lay bets with each other as to whether or not, on this particular morning, George was going to fight an olive tree.

Well, I want you all to be polite,' said Mother firmly, adding, 'and you're not to mention owls, Larry. She might think we're peculiar.' 'We are,' concluded Larry with feeling.

dropped in on my old shepherd friend Yani who provided us with some bread and fig cake and a straw hat full of wild strawberries to sustain us.

sleepily through the olive groves, silvered by a moon as large and as white as a magnolia blossom.

In a few days small white clouds started their winter parade, trooping across the sky, soft and chubby, long, languorous, and unkempt, or small and crisp as feathers, and driving them before it, like an ill-assorted flock of sheep, would come the wind. This was warm at first, and came in gentle gusts, rubbing through the olive groves so that the leaves trembled and turned silver with excitement, rocking the cypresses so that they undulated gently, and stirring the dead

The warm air smelled of the day's sunshine, of dew, and of a hundred aromatic leaf scents.

you reached a small half-moon bay, rimmed with white sands and great piles of dried ribbon-weed that had been thrown up by the winter storms and lay along the beach like large, badly made birds' nests.