Lovers are rarely the most rational beings in creation.

You mean to say he became mad deliberately?' ...Nothing is more likely,' said the duke.

How is a magician to exist without books? Let someone explain that to me. It is like asking a politician to achieve high office without the benefit of bribes or patronage.

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

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.

Drawing teaches habits of close observation that will always be useful.