I can't talk about my childhood at all, because cannot say I when I mean we, and if I say we it leads to a conversation about how I have a dead sister, instead of what I want to talk about. I found that out in the summer. So I don't talk about it.

I've always thought fairies are like mushrooms, you trip over them when you're not thinking about them, but they're hard to spot when you're searching for them.

They want me to do something, and I'll do it, or I won't do it, and it'll work or not, and I'll survive or not.

I will laugh about this one day, I told myself. I will laugh about it with people so clever and sophisticated I can't imagine them properly now.

They could take the money from building enough nukes to kill all the Russians in the world and give it to libraries. What good does an independent nuclear deterrent do Britain, compared to the good of libraries?

What do you want to be, free or happy? How about if they really are mutually exclusive options? What is freedom anyway? How does humanity govern itself when each person can have anything they want? How does humanity govern itself when nothing is natural?

It's wrong for libraries to have limited budgets.

I nearly fell asleep over Dickens in English. Mind you, he's snoozeworthy at the best of times.

Aujourd'hui, rien.
That's what Louis XVI wrote in his diary on the day of the storming of the Bastille.

If I were omnipotent and omnibenevolent I wouldn't be so damn ineffable.

Class is entirely intangible, and the way it affects things isn't subject to scientific analysis, and it's not supposed to be real but it's pervasive and powerful. See; just like magic.

It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.

Libraries really are wonderful. They're better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.

I am reading The Lord of the Rings. I suddenly wanted to. I almost know it by heart, but I can still sink right into it. I know no other book that is so much like going on a journey. When I put it down to this, I feel as if I am also waiting with Pippin for the echoes of that stone down the well.

There is one law for rich and poor alike, which prevents them equally from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges.

Libraries really are wonderful. They're better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit in selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.

I care more about the people in books than the people I see every day.

I don't think you realize how different it is for me than for you. You can make your way by your own wits and claws, while I must always be dependent on some male to protect me. Wits I may have, but claws I am without, and while hands are useful for writing and fine work they are no use in a battle.

Magic can make things happen before you do it. It can make things have happened.

You are making Socrates's mistake of assuming the gods are good.