My Family and Other Animals (Corfu Trilogy #1)

by Gerald Durrell

This, I decided, was really the way to die, with shrouded horses, acres of flowers, and a horde of most satisfactorily grief-stricken relatives.

‘Why? Why? Because if you did you would be changed when you woke. Yes, the black cypresses, they are dangerous. While you sleep, their roots grow into your brains and steal them, and when you wake up you are mad, head as empty as a whistle.’

‘only the cypress is

the thief of intelligence.

‘Larry’s too fond of telling people how to do things, and doing nothing himself.

All the old people I know have had their minds locked up like grey, scaly oysters since they were in their teens.’

Apart from his mother and his birds I had discovered that Kralefsky had one great interest in life, and that was an entirely imaginary world he had evoked in his mind, a world in which rich and strange adventures were always happening,