And it's a pity too that I've no right to open your letters. I hope you don't get many, or my conscience will give me no peace.

Oh! Polly thought. Why aren't all girls locked up by law the year they turn fifteen? They do such stupid things!

I've seen golems. They don't behave like a real person.

Beauty isn't made of sugar.

Imagination doesn’t just mean making things up. It means thinking things through, solving them, or hoping to do so, and being just distant enough to be able to laugh at things that are normally painful. Head teachers would call this escapism, but they would be entirely wrong. I would call fantasy the most serious, and the most useful, branch of writing there is. And this is why I don’t, and never would, write Real Books.

Nobody gets praised for the right reasons.

I think we ought to live happily ever after.