Time and I have quarrelled. All hours are midnight now. I had a clock and a watch, but I destroyed them both. I could not bear the way they mocked me.

But when the fairy sang the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy’s song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.

I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment.

He hardly ever spoke of magic, and when he did it was like a history lesson and no one could bear to listen to him.

A piece of writing is like a piece of magic. You create something out of nothing.

And the name of the one shall be Fearfulness. And the name of the other shall be Arrogance... Well, clearly you are not Fearfulness, so I suppose you must be Arrogance.' This was not very polite.

But, though French, she was also very brave.