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.

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.

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 is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read - unless it be reading while you eat. Amabel did both: they are not the same thing, as you will see if you think the matter over.

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

It is curious that nearly all the great fortunes are made by turning beautiful things into ugly ones. Making beauty out of ugliness is very ill-paid work.

I think everyone in the world is friends if you can only get them to see you don't want to be un-friends.