“I learned failure early and mastered it.”

“I learned to fly on a broom," he said, rolling up his sleeves. "I can learn to milk a goat, I bet." Though flying on a broom proved to be the easier task, he found.”

“I do not listen when anyone uses the word immoral," said the Wizard. "In the young it is ridiculous, in the old it is sententious and reactionary and an early warning sign of apoplexy. In the middle-aged, who love and fear the idea of moral life the most, it is hypocritical.”

“I'm not involved in shame. Morals are learned in childhood, and I didn't have any such holiday called childhood.”

“For one short wet month early in the next year the drought lifted. Spring tipped in like green well water frothing at the hedges bubbling at the roadside splashing from the cottage roof in garlands of ivy and stringflower ”

“Light will blind us in time, but what we learn in the dark can see us through.”

“. . . this girl who seemed, increasingly, to be interested in learning to read everything except how human beings talked to one another.”