“I think people make their own faces, as they grow.”

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,

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

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.

Elizabeth. Only the strongest people have the pluck to change their minds, and say so, if they see they have been wrong in their ideas.

I expect when we grow up, we shall think like them – but let’s hope we remember what it was like to think in the way children do, and understand the boys and the girls that are growing up when we’re men and women.

Leave something for someone but dont leave someone for something.

I don’t think I was doing anything poorly at that time, but I can certainly see how my writing has changed.

Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; its a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.

Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget. A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.

I almost feel like I didn’t pay enough dues, it was pretty incredible. I always thought I’d work with her, I just didn’t think it would happen at this point in my career.

And its sonic connections, it’s a sense of harmony that I think we all have even if we don’t know how to express it – it’s something musical, it’s synapse connections in our brain.

White has always been an exclusive definition. I think one of the challenges for white people is to figure out how to have a more inclusive picture of who their families are, of who they are.

I think that this year, I just come out and play smart football. I got some good advice the other day (from CBS Sports Dan Dierdorf): Every drive that ends in a kick is a good drive.

And I think that, for those of us that aren’t religious, we need, or I need, art that stimulates the same kind of thinking about what it is to be a mensch, or a good man, things like that.