There are times when I can’t write, so I go for a walk. Here are photos taken on a walk round Batsford Arboretum one Sunday in November. They’re interspersed with quotations I like.

‘When you regain a sense of your life as a journey of discovery, you return to rhythm with yourself.’  John O’Donohue

‘Perhaps we are HERE in order to say: house, bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window… To say them more intensely than the THINGS themselves.’ Rilke in the Ninth Duono Elegy

‘Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, and where you will go.’ Rebecca Solnit in A Field Guide to Getting Lost

‘Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light.’ Anne Carson

‘…/And the thought comes

of that other being who is awake, too,

letting our prayers break on him,

not like this for a few hours,

but for days, years, for eternity.’

R.S. Thomas in Aberdaron Church

‘…if a creative person has a sense of humour, a sense of style, and a certain amount of stubbornness, (s)he finds a way to do what (s)he needs to inspire of the obstacles.’

Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art