She seemed older to me, over-experienced by travel; needing to be learnt again, and I hadn’t the energy. - John Fowles

Thus it had come about that she had read far more fiction, and far more poetry, those two sanctuaries of the lonely, than most of her kind.

It was too exactly as imagined to be true. But I felt as gladly and expectantly disorientated, as happily and alertly alone, as Alice in Wonderland.

Even if we could feed a population twice the size of the present world population, and feed them better than they are fed now, there is no guarantee that such an overpopulated world would be happier than a properly populated one....the state of overpopulation turns progress into regress.