There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.

So much perfection argues rottenness somewhere.

I hold an old-fashioned notion that a happy marriage is the crown of a woman’s life.

Peter was not very well during the evening. His mother put him to bed, and made some chamomile tea: "One table-spoonful to be taken at bedtime.

I have just made stories to please myself, because I never grew up.

For quiet, solitary and observant children create their own world and live in it, nourishing their imaginations on the material at hand.

Then Mrs. Tiggy-winkle made tea - a cup for herself and a cup for Lucie. They sat before the fire on a bench and looked sideways at one another. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle's hand, holding the tea-cup, was very very brown, and very very wrinkly with the soap-suds; and all through her gown and her cap, there were HAIRPINS sticking wrong end out; so that Lucie didn't like to sit too near her.