One of the uses of poetry - one says it to oneself in distressing circumstances, ... or when one has to wait at railway stations, or when one cannot get to sleep at night.

When you are young so many things are difficult to believe, and yet the dullest people will tell you that they are true--such things, for instance, as that the earth goes round the sun, and that it is not flat but round. But the things that seem really likely, like fairy-tales and magic, are, so say the grown-ups, not true at all. Yet they are so easy to believe, especially when you see them happening.

Time is, as you are probably aware, merely a convenient fiction. There is no such thing as time.

Don't you think it's rather nice to think that we're in a book that God's writing? If I were writing a book, I might make mistakes. But God knows how to make the story end just right--in the way that's best for us." Do you really believe that, Mother?" Peter asked quietly. Yes," she said, "I do believe it--almost always--except when I'm so sad that I can't believe anything. But even when I don't believe it, I know it's true--and I try to believe it.

I'll plant and water, sow and weed, Till not an inch of earth shows brown, And take a vow of each small seed To grow to greenness and renown: And then some day you'll pass my way, See gold and crimson, bell and star, And catch my garden's soul, and say: "How sweet these cottage gardens are!"

There is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs forever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real.

There are brown eyes in the world, after all, as well as blue, and one pair of brown that meant heaven to me as the blue had never done