“I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived. I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child. . . . that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination.”

“I know,” said Peter. “Perhaps better than anyone. But you can’t stay a child forever. To choose to speak into Echo’s Well is to choose illusion. To choose to avoid the responsibilities of being an adult. The real trick—the real choice—is to keep the best of the child you were, without forgetting when you grow up.“It is the best of both worlds, Jack. Being a child is to believe in magic everywhere…“…but even Peter Pan had to grow up one day.”

“In a world where billions believe their deity conceived a mortal child with a virgin human, it's stunning how little imagination most people display.”

“To be a human being is to be a child of God”

“Out of the red and silver and the long cry of alarm to the poet who survives in all human beings, as the child survives in him; to this poet she threw an unexpected ladder in the middle of the city and ordained, 'Climb!”

“The human child – so much cannier at times than the stupefyingly ponderous adult.”