He agreed with David Hockney that an artist really had to be able to draw before anything else could be achieved.
Great art, she felt, had a calming effect on the viewer; it made one stop in awe, which is exactly what Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol did not do. You did not stop in awe. They stopped you in your track...
Families come in different ways... sometimes they are given to you, but sometimes you find them yourself, unexpectedly, as you go through life.
Don’t be excessively judgmental, if you like, but always–always–be prepared to make a judgment. Otherwise you’ll go through life not really knowing what you mean.
Do not allow the profession of which you are a member to induce you to take a bleak view of humanity. You will encounter all sorts of bad behavior but do not judge everybody by the standards of the lo...
Do not act meanly, do not be unkind, because the time for setting things right may pass before your heart changes course. Isabel Dalhousie
Chapter ElevenShe did not spend long in the supermarket at Riverwalk, confining her purchases to supplies she would need for the next few days. There was beef for stew, a large pumpkin, a packet of be...
Caution was always required when you looked under a bed—anybody’s bed, even your own.
Cattle had no vote, nor the words to express a view, but their feelings ranked above just about everything else in the country.
By the time Domenica arrived at the Gothic Revival sandstone building on Queen Street, she had put out of her mind all thought of Antonia's torrid affair - at least she assumed it was torrid, and anyw...
But only if youses shift yoursels and get in. He used the demotic plural of you, a common feature of speech in Scotland.
But for each person who is made happy by love, there will be many for whom it turns out to be a cause of regret. That is because it can be so fleeting; one moment it may take our breath away, the next...
Believe me, there’s nothing more brittle than human beauty. Encounter it. Savour it, by all means. Then watch how it turns to dust.
Because sometimes in this life we’re given things that we don’t deserve – that we haven’t done anything to merit, so to speak. We don’t have to give those up if they come our way. And remember this: p...
Because laughs never die away entirely, said Jamie. At least, if you believe in Marconi.
Be very careful of anything that looks too good to be true. Because if it looks too good to be true, that’s probably because that’s exactly what it is!
Be gentle...Many of the people who will come to see you are injured in spirit. They need to talk about things that have hurt them, or about things that they have done. Do not sit in judgement on them,...
Auden returns to one of his most important themes—that of repairing the tragic division in our lives, of making us whole again: While, as they lie in the grass of our neglect, So many long-forgotten o...
Although she was not a great reader, Mma Potokwane was a firm believer in the power of the book. The more books that Botswana had, in her view, the better. It would be on books that the future would b...
A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?