“But I discovered that people like me -- they do, you know, if you like them -- and then it was all right.”

“What makes you a real girl or boy is that no one laughs at you. If you are imitation or unreal, the rules give you a right to exist provided you do what the real ones or brutes say. What makes you into me or Charles Morgan is that the rules allow all the girls to be better than me and all the boys better than Charles Morgan.”

“You've probably all had those kinds of dreams that are like usual life, except that a lot of things are not the same, and you seem to know the future in them. Well, this is because these other worlds where two things can happen spread out from our world like rainbows, and sort of flow into one another-”

“If you like, you can all think of it as my gift to you. I never had much else to give. You can get on and play your own lives as you like, while I just keep moving. This story of it all can be another gift. I’ve made an arrangement with Adam. When I’ve finished, which is almost now, I’m going to put the bundle of papers in the garden of the Old Fort, before I move on. Adam’s going to get them and take them to his father. And if you read it and don’t believe it’s real, so much the better. It will make another safeguard against Them.But you wouldn’t believe how lonely you get.”

“You have no right to make jigsaws of people.”

“So you were going to rescue the Prince! Why did you pretend to run away? To deceive the Witch?""Not likely! I'm a coward. Only way I can do something this frightening is to tell myself I'm not doing it!”

“Christopher discovered that you dealt with obnoxious masters and most older boys the way you dealt with governesses: you quite politely told them the truth in the way they wanted to hear it, so that they thought they had won and left you in peace.”