“She felt that it was only her body that was getting old. Inside she had always been the same young girl.”

“But she’d managed to find her way into our reality, perhaps because she had an important mission here, perhaps because she was here to save us from what people call the monotony of life.”

“Sophie left the den and wandered about in the large garden. She tried to forget what she had learned at school, especially in science classes.If she had grown up in this garden without knowing anything at all about nature, how would she feel about the spring?Would she try to invent some kind of explanation for why it suddenly started to rain one day? Would she work out some fantasy to explain where the snow went and why the sun rose in the morning?”

“Indeed, there is pain when spring buds burst..."Wasn't there a Swedish poet who had said something like that? Or was she Finnish?”

“a sensation is always the same as a piece of news, and a piece of news never lives long.”

“Wisest is she who knows she does not know.”

“If I’d chosen never to the foot inside the great fairytale, I’d never have known what I’ve lost. Do you see what I’m getting at? Sometimes it’s worse for us human beings to lose something dear to us than never to have had it at all.”