Before we left, Grandmother talked a lot about the arctic night we would fly through. 'Isn't it a mystical word, "arctic"? Pure and quite hard. And meridians. Isn't that pretty? We're going to fly along them, faster than the light can follow us... Time won't be able to catch us.

And all you can do is just read," she said. She raised her voice an screamed, "You just read and read and read!" Then she threw herself down on the table and wept.

I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know.

Someone who eats pancakes and jam can't be so awfully dangerous. You can talk to him.

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.

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.

But he thought all the strange words were beautiful, and he had never had a book of his own before.