She even learnt the language of a strange country which Senior Cosetti had been told some people believed still existed, although no-one in the world could say where it was. The name of this country was Wales.

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.

There is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure - it is, after all, what everybody does all the time.

..The argument he was conducting with his neighbor as to whether the English magician had gone mad because he was a magician, or because he was English.

It would need someone very remarkable to recover your name, Stephen, someone of rare perspicacity, with extraordinary talents and incomparable nobility of character. Me, in fact.

I was told once by some country people that a magician should never tell his dreams because the telling will make them come true. But I say that is great nonsense.

An explorer cannot stay at home reading maps other men have made.