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“We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are." “You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!" “You think the dead we have ever loved ever truly leave us? You think that we don't recall them more clearly than ever in times of greatest trouble?" “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” “Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love.” “We're all human, aren't we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.” Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight, “Wouldn't it be dreadful if some day in our own world, at home, men start going wild inside, like the animals here, and still look like men, so that you'd never know which were which.” All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. “I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us." One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands out and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun--which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone's eyes. “You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes." “I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart for so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can be together all the time." “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day." “If nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that - warm things, kind things, sweet things - help and comfort and laughter - and sometimes gay, kind laughter is the best help of all." “Everything's a story - You are a story - I am a story." “Perhaps to be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people...Lots of clever people have done harm and have been wicked." “All women are princesses , it is our right." “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” “If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.” “You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible." The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village. So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone. “Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable." “Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark." “And hope is like love...a ridiculous, wonderful, powerful thing." “There is nothing sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name. Nothing." “If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?" “I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again." “I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly; “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down. Just because something is typed - whether it is typed on a business card or typed in a newspaper or book - this does not mean that it is true. |