Emeralds,' said the rabbit. 'Emeralds make a lovely gift.

It's only adults who read the top layers most of the time. I think children read the internal meanings of everything.

When you hide another story in a story, that’s the story I am telling the children.

The magic of childhood is the strangeness of childhood — the uniqueness that makes us see things that other people don't see.

It was inconceivable to me as a child that I would be an adult. I mean, one assumed that it would happen, but obviously it didn't happen, or if it did, it happened when your back was turned, and then suddenly you were there. So I couldn't have thought about it much.

And the walls became the world all around.

Then from far away across the world he smelled good things to eat, so he gave up being king of the wild things.