“Laugh at them, tread on them, and let them lead you to something better.”

The little island seemed to float on the dark lake-waters. Trees grew on it, and a little hill rose in the middle of it. It was a mysterious island, lonely and beautiful.

I wonder where you got that idea from? I mean, the idea that it’s feeble to change your mind once it’s made up. That’s a wrong idea, you know.

I do love the beginning of the summer hols,’ said Julian. They always seem to stretch out ahead for ages and ages.’ ‘They go so nice and slowly at first,’ said Anne, his little sister. ‘Then they start to gallop.

Well, we must be jolly old-fashioned then,’ said Bessie. ‘Because we not only believe in the Faraway Tree and love our funny friends there, but we go to see them too – and we visit the lands at the top of the Tree as well!

Remorse is a terrible thing to bear, Pam, one of the worst of all punishments in this life.

It was the most beautiful evening, with the lake as blue as a cornflower and the sky flecked with rosy clouds. They held their hard-boiled eggs in one hand and a piece of bread and butter in the other, munching happily.

All the children stood and gazed at it, loving it and longing to go to it. It looked so secret – almost magic.

You’re trying to escape from your difficulties, and there never is any escape from difficulties, never. They have to be faced and fought.

Writing for children is an art in itself, and a most interesting one.

A clown needn’t be the same out of the ring as he has to be when he’s in it. If you look at photographs of clowns when they’re just being ordinary men, they’ve got quite sad faces.

As they drew near to it, and saw the willow trees that bent over the water-edge and heard the sharp call of moorhens that scuttled off,

I am not really much interested in talking to adults, although I suppose practically every mother in the kingdom knows my name and my books. It’s their children I love.

I have written, probably, more books for children than any other writer, from story-books to plays, and can claim to know more about interesting children than most.

Oh, I wish I lived in a caravan!’ said Jimmy longingly. ‘How lovely it must be to live in a house that has wheels and can go away down the lanes and through the towns, and stand still in fields at night!

Hatred is so much easier to win than love – and so much harder to get rid of.

My work in books, films and talks lies almost wholly with children, and I have very little time to give to grown-ups.

The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made.

he or she should learn something about fieldwork, something about bibliography, something about how to carry out library research, and something about how to publish that research.

If you stop and think about it, nearly all great humor is at the expense of someone or something.

The guiding purpose of the government regulator is to prevent rather than to create something.

Revolutions are something you see only in retrospect.

They care about their club, and that’s why they always have something good to say, even when it is negative

Impersonal place needs something significant to fill it up.” We’ve abandoned the old belief that humanity is at the physical center of the universe but more come back to believing we are at the center of meaning.

As an absolute right something few other inhabitants can expect as a special privilege – then the result is likely to be spontaneous outbreaks of anti-Semitism.