"You can have all you can expect and accept."

“[T]he different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition [G]eometry is not true, it is advantageous.”

“If you must masturbate, you have already failed”

“I always knew mum loved me - tough, look-after-yourself love, as if she knew she wouldn't always be there.”

Source : "People think the book is a love-letter to Africa, but really it is a love-letter to my mother". Interview with Louisa Young, www.theguardian.com. March 14, 2002.

“I could read at a very early age and I loved stories, losing myself in stories, novels.”

“Worst of all, the inner vault is guarded by a live dragon, attended by fifty naked women armed with poisoned spears, each of them sworn to die in Requin's service. All redheads. -You're just making that up, Jean.”

“If you bear the cross unwillingly, you make it a burden, and load yourself more heavily; but you must bear it.”

“Social topics may hit too close to home for people, but then again, if you pull a heartstring, then that's what country music is. It's not just songs about getting drunk and leaving your girl.”

“Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.”

Source : Robert Browning (2014). “A Selection of Poems”, p.33, Cambridge University Press