H.E. Bates

“This fusion of wood and water is an entrancing thing. Without the wood the stream would be nothing: a mere thin watercourse…

— H.E. Bates

“If I shut my eyes it returns: the evocation of a whole wood, a whole world of wood-darkness and flowers and birds…

— H.E. Bates

“The major was very interested in the mountains, and we in turn were very interested in the major, a spare spruce man…

— H.E. Bates

“It is one of the oddest and sometimes one of the most charming characteristics of English weather that at times one season…

— H.E. Bates

“Every morning Mrs Eglantine sat at the round bamboo bar of the New Pacific Hotel and drank her breakfast. This consisted of…

— H.E. Bates

“And here, it seems to me, is much of the secret of the charm of woods in England. A wood should never…

— H.E. Bates

“But I drew the line, one evening, at Jerry O'Keefe's, the fish-shop where people crammed in late for hot plates of peas…

— H.E. Bates

“A wood at night, or even more at twilight, can be a strange place. Fear begins to come more quickly in a…

— H.E. Bates

“The cookery books will give you a thousand finicky devices, mushrooms in this, mushrooms in that, but there is only one way—to…

— H.E. Bates

“Blowsily, frowsily, comfortably, toothlessly, Mrs Candleton was sleeping away the afternoon in her hair-curlers and her pinnafore.”

— H.E. Bates

“There are those who talk of the evil spirit of the woods. But for me there is only one evil spirit of…

— H.E. Bates