Love, with very young people, is a heartless business. We drink at that age from thirst, or to get drunk; it is only later in life that we occupy our… - Karen Blixen

I was young, and by instinct of self-preservation I had to collect my energy on something, if I were not to be whirled away with the dusk on the farm-roads, or the smoke on the plain. I begun in the evenings to write stories, fairy-tales, and romances, that would take my mind a long way off, to other countries and times.

Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.

Where, My Lord, is music bred — upon the instrument or within the ear that listens? The loveliness of woman is created in the eye of man.