“No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time trying to understand it.”

“Talking to you is like -- like talking to an eel!""No, is it? I've never tried to talk to an eel. Isn't it as waste of time?""Not such a waste of time as talking to you!”

“The greatest riddle of all.... the riddle of man! The complex mystery of the universal human being as he stands wihtin the threshold of universal laws. This is the most fascinating puzzle!”

“Sometimes, people come up to me when I am knitting and they say things like, "Oh, I wish I could knit, but I'm just not the kind of person who can sit and waste time like that." How can knitting be wasting time? First, I never just knit; I knit and think, knit and listen, knit and watch. Second, you aren't wasting time if you get a useful or beautiful object at the end of it.I will remember that not everyone understands. I will resist the urge to ask others what they do when they watch TV.”

“Alice sighed wearily. 'I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, 'than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.”

“The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon who is wasting fairyland.”