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

“Why can't you fly now, mother?""Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the way.""Why do they forget the way?""Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless. It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly.”

“One ought not to judge her: all children are Heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb high trees and say shocking things and leap so very high grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.) Some small ones are terrible and fey, Utterly Heartless. Some are dear and sweet and Hardly Heartless At All. September stood very generally in the middle on the day the Green Wind took her, Somewhat Heartless, and Somewhat Grown.”

“It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.”

“They took it for granted that if they went he would go also, but really they scarcely cared. Thus children are ever so ready, when novelty knocks, to desert their dearest ones.”

“I don't care if you wear white to your coming-out party and pretend to be a virgin, but you're gay, Kit. G-A-Y. Gay! So gay, fairies everywhere will weep that your machismo avoided their gaydar for so long.”