Rumer Godden

“It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.”

“There is an Indian proverb that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.”

“A writer who has never explored words, who has never searched, seeded, sieved, sifted through his knowledge and memory... is no writer.”

“When you learn to read you will be born again...and you will never be quite so alone again.”

“For a dyed-in-the-wool author, nothing is as dead as a book once it is written.”

“Jealousy is a terrible thing. It is the acid of the soul.”

“No one is ever satisfied where he is.”

“Those who are happy are not without a care in the world. They are just those who have chosen to not allow life's circumstances to dictate their joy.”

“Whoever said it's tough at the top has never been at the bottom.”

“I have written a great many books, and said what I had to say; I have seen the world... I have loved and been loved. I am a happy woman.”

“A garden can be a place of meditation, a place of healing, a place of joy. It can be a place of work, a place of community, a place of solitude.”

“Memory is a strange thing. It can be as flimsy as a cobweb, or as strong as a steel cable.”

“There are two kinds of people, the ones who don't know and the ones who don't know they don't know.”