J.M. Barrie

“i know i'm not clever but i'm always right.”

“Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience... and pimples.”

“Don't forget to speak scornfully of the Victorian Age; there will be time for meekness when you try to better it. Very soon you will be Victorian or that sort of thing yourselves; next session probably, when the freshman come up.”

“Just always be waiting for me.”

“He looked at her uncomfortably; blinking, you know, like one not sure whether he was awake or asleep.”

“Wendy, Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be flying about with me saying funny things to the stars.”

“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.”

“I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it? Time is chasing after all of us.”

“Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, "To die will be an awfully big adventure.”

“Peter invented, with Wendy's help, a new game that fascinated him enormously, until he suddenly had no more interest in it, which, as you have been told, was what always happened with his games. It consisted in pretending not to have adventures...”

“it was like an examination paper that asks grammar, when what you want to be asked is Kings of England.”

“It was dreadful the way all the three were looking at him, just as if they did not admire him.”

“Mr. Darling had a passion for being exactly like his neighbours.”

“Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him but respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made any woman respect him.”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder… or forgetful.”

“Звездите са красиви, но на тях не им е позволено да се месят в човешките работи; те трябва само вечно да гледат какво става. Това е наказание, което им е наложено за нещо, извършено толкова отдавна, че никоя звезда вече не си спомня какво е било. Затова по-старите звезди гледат изцъклено и рядко говорят (звездите си говорят, като си смигат), но малките са още любопитни.”

“This meal happened to be a make-believe tea, and they sat 'round the board guzzling in their greed; and really, what with their chatter and recriminations, the noise, as Wendy said, was postiviely deafening.”

“Most disquieting reflection of all, was it not bad form to think about good form?”

“They knew in what they called their hearts that one can get on quite well without a mother, and that it is only the mothers who think you can't.”

“All are keeping a sharp look-out in front, but none suspects that the danger may be creeping up from behind.”

“They were going round and round the island, but they did not meet because all were going at the same rate.”

“And if he forgets them so quickly," Wendy argued, "how can we expect that he will go on remembering us?”

“However, as we are here we may as well stay and look on. That is all we are, lookers-on. Nobody really wants us. So let us watch and say jaggy things, in the hope that some of them will hurt.”

“It was not really Saturday night, at least it may have been, for they had long lost count of the days; but always if they wanted to do anything special they said this was Saturday night, and then they did it.”

“Peter was not with them for the moment, and they felt rather lonely up there by themselves. He could go so much faster than they that he would suddenly shoot out of sight, to have some adventure in which they had no share. He would come down laughing over something fearfully funny he had been saying to a star, but he had already forgotten what it was, or he would come up with mermaid scales still sticking to him, and yet not be able to to say for certain what had been happening. It was really rather irritating to children who had never seen a mermaid.”

“Forget them, Wendy. Forget them all. Come with me where you'll never, never have to worry about grown up things again. Never is an awfully long time.”

“Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children's minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can't) you would see your own mother doing this and you would find it very interesting to watch. It's quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on Earth you picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek, as if it were a nice kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out the prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.”

“I don't want to go to school and learn solemn things.”

“Take care, lest an adventure is now offered you, which, if accepted, will plunge you in deepest woe.”

“Quando il primo bambino rise per la prima volta, la sua risata si sbriciolò in migliaia di frammenti che si sparpagliarono”

“astonishing splashes of colour”

“asleep to rummage in their minds”

“Nonsense. Young boys should never be sent to bed. They always wake up a day older, and then before you know it, they're grown.”

“Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John’s, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingos flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by its parents...”

“There are, I dare say, many lovers who would never have been drawn to each other had they met for the first time, as, say, they met the second time.”

“We are all failures- at least the best of us are.”

“Our life is a book to which we add daily, until suddenly we are finished, and then the manuscript is burned.”

“Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so, of course, they had a nurse. As they were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana, who had belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her. She had always thought children important, however, and the Darlings had become acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most of her spare time peeping into perambulators, and was much hated by careless nursemaids, whom she followed to their homes and complained of to their mistresses. She proved to be quite a treasure of a nurse.”

“Of all the delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very nearly real. That is why there are night-lights. ”

“But where do you live mostly now?"With the lost boys."Who are they?"They are the children who fall out of their perambulators when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to the Neverland to defray expanses. I'm captain."What fun it must be!"Yes," said cunning Peter, "but we are rather lonely. You see we have no female companionship."Are none of the others girls?"Oh no; girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their prams.”

“One could mention many lovable traits in Smee. For instance, after killing, it was his spectacles he wiped instead of his weapon.”

“Feeling that Peter was on his way back, the Neverland had again woke into life. We ought to use the pluperfect and say wakened, but woke is better and was always used by Peter.”

“and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.”

“Never is an awfully long time.”

“A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don't find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.”

“Sir, you are both ungallant and deficient!How am I deficient?You're just a boy.”

“Will they reach the nursery in time? If so, how delightful for them, and we shall all breathe a sigh of relief, but there will be no story. On the other hand, if they are not in time, I solemnly promise that it will all come right in the end.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Darling and Nana rushed into the nursery too late. The birds were flown”

“I wasn't crying about mothers," he said rather indignantly. "I was crying because I can't get my shadow to stick on. Besides, I wasn't crying.”

“Shoot the Wendybird!”