When you're writing a book, it's rather like going on a very long walk, across valleys and mountains and things [...] The highest mountain on the walk is obviously the end of the book, because it's got to be the best view of all, when everything comes together and you can look back and see that everything you've done all ties up. But it's a very, very long, slow process.

...there are no secrets unless you keep them to yourself, and this was the greatest secret I had ever had to keep in my life so far.

Had I not had children of my own, I would have never written books for children, nor would I have been capable of doing so.

I was observing her closely as I talked, and after a while I began to get the impression that she was not, in fact, quite so merry and smiling a girl as I had been led to believe at first. She seemed to be coiled in herself, as though with a secret she was jealously guarding. The deep-blue eyes moved too quickly about the room, never settling or resting on one thing for more than a moment; and over all her face, though so faint that they might not even have been there, those small downward lines of sorrow.

I'd rather be fried alive and eaten by Mexicans.

My dear young fellow,' the Old-Green-Grasshopper said gently, 'there are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven't started wondering about yet.

It was slowly beginning to dawn upon Henry that nothing is any fun if you can get as much of it as you want. Especially money.