J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
24 quotes
"I wasn't crying about mothers," he said rather indignantly. "I was crying because I can't get my shadow to stick on. Besides, I wasn't crying."
"Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremour ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one. Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, "To die will be an awfully big adventure."
"When she expressed a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell would be glad to see her, he said, ‘Who is Tinker Bell?’ ‘O Peter,’ she said, shocked; but even when she explained he could not remember. ‘There are such a lot of them,’ he said. ‘I expect she is no more.’ I expect he was right, for fairies don’t live long, but they are so little that a short time seems a good while to them."
"Build a house?" exclaimed John."For the Wendy," said Curly."For Wendy?" John said, aghast. "Why, she is only a girl!""That," explained Curly, "is why we are her servants."
"Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time."
"She asked where he lived. Second to the right,' said Peter, 'and then straight on till morning."
"I can't come,' she said apologetically, 'I have forgotten how to fly.''I'll soon teach you again.''O Peter, don't waste the fairy dust on me."
"...and as she was crossing to the day-nursery he added thoughtlessly, 'And shut that window. I feel a draught.' 'O George, never ask me to do that. The window must always be left open for them, always, always."
"Pan, who and what art thou?" he cried huskily."I'm youth, I'm joy," Peter answered at a venture, "I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg."
"It was then that Hook bit him.Not the pain of this but its unfairness was what dazed Peter. It made him quite helpless. He could only stare, horrified. Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but he will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness; no one except Peter."
"He did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen him before in the faces of many women who have no children. Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of some mothers also."
"It was not really Saturday night, at least it may have been, for they had long lost count of the days; but always if they wanted to do anything special they said this was Saturday night, and then they did it."
"On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more."
"Girls are much too clever to fall out of their prams"
"Good form without knowing it is the best form of all."
"But where do you live mostly now?"With the lost boys."Who are they?"They are the children who fall out of their perambulators when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to the Neverland to defray expanses. I'm captain."What fun it must be!"Yes," said cunning Peter, "but we are rather lonely. You see we have no female companionship."Are none of the others girls?"Oh no; girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their prams."
"He was top-heavy with conceit."
"Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be rewarded instead of smacked."
"Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John’s, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingos flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by its parents..."
"You need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up. In the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than the other girls."
"He was so much the humblest one that Wendy was especially gentle with him."
"All remember about my mother," Nibs told them, "is that she often said to my father, 'Oh, how I wish I had a cheque-book of my own!' I don't know what a cheque-book is, but I should just love to give my mother one."
"It may have been quixotic, but it was magnificent."
"But the years came and went without bringing the careless boy; and when they met again Wendy was a married woman, and Peter was no more to her than a little dust in the box in which she had kept her toys."