“In my old age, I see that life is often more fantastic and terrible than stories we believed as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees.”

“In my old age, I see that life itself is often more fantastic and terrible than the stories we believed as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees.”

“Perhaps, too, you will then believe that nothing is more wonderful, nothing more fantastic than real life, and that all that a writer can do is to present it as "in a glass, darkly".”

“I don't believe in things like that - fairies or brownies or magic or anything. It's old-fashioned.''Well, we must be jolly old-fashioned then,' said Bessie. 'Because we not only believe in the Faraway Tree and love our funny friends there, but we go to see them too - and we visit the lands at the top of the Tree as well!”

“…After all, each story is a Rorschach Test, isn't it? And if people find beasties and bedbugs in my ink-splotches, I cannot prevent it, can I? They will insist on seeing them, anyway, and that is their privilege. Still, I wish people, quasi-intellectuals, did not try so hard to find the man under the old maid's bed. More often than not, as we know, he simply isn't there.”

“I never liked Jules Verne, believing that the real was always more fantastic than the fantastical.”