“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”

“It's so beautiful that it hurts me,' said Anne softly. 'Perfect things like that always did hurt me — I remember I called it "the queer ache" when I was a child. What is the reason that pain like this seems inseparable from perfection? Is it the pain of finality — when we realise that there can be nothing beyond but retrogression?''Perhaps,' said Owen dreamily, 'it is the prisoned infinite in us calling out to its kindred infinite as expressed in that visible perfection.”

“I'm just tired of everything…even of the echoes. There is nothing in my life but echoes…echoes of lost hopes and dreams and joys. They're beautiful and mocking.”

“Grandmother's voice was ice. "They do not. Your mother has been happy all these years, till you began stirring up old memories. Leave her alone. She is my daughter... no outsider shall ever come between us again... neither Andrew Stuart nor you nor anyone. And you will be good enough to remember that.”

“There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.”

“The other day Nan said, 'Nothing can ever be quite the same for any of us again.' It made me feel rebellious. Why shouldn't things be the same again - when everything is over and Jem and Jerry are back? We'll all be happy and jolly again and these days will seem just like a bad dream.”

“I've just been imagining that it was really me you wanted after all and that I was to stay here for ever and ever. It was a great comfort while it lasted. But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop and that hurts.”