My bag was as light as my happy-go-lucky heart.

...now and then a giggling trail of mermaids appeared in our wake. We fed them oatmeal.

The lamp sizzled as it burned. It made everything seem close and safe, a little family circle they all knew and trusted. Outside this circle lay everything that was strange and frightening, and the darkness seemed to reach higher and higher and further and further away, right to the end of the world.

One ought to have the right to have a secret and to spring it as a surprise. But if you live inside a family you have neither.

Malander had an idea and was trying to work it out, but it would take him time. Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. Or else they forgot their idea along the way and didn't even realise that they forgotten.

There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that’s a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don’t fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all the year. And then when everything’s quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep—then they appear.

Most of the people are homesick anyway, and a little lonely, and they hide themselves in their hair and are turned into flowers.