Every child needs to have for itself not only its loving parents and siblings and friends of its own age, but a grown-up friend.

The Irish, as a race, have the oral tradition in their blood. A direct question to them is an anathema, but in other cases, a mere syllable of a hero's name will elicit whole chapters of stories.

Don't you know that everybody's got a Fairyland of their own?

There’s great beauty on this world if you just have the eyes to see it.

All of us are subject to being passive to the social ills around us. It's a struggle not to become, by staying silent, an accomplice.

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

More and more I’ve become convinced that the great treasure to possess is the unknown.

Child and serpent, star and stone — all one.

If we are going to teach the world to stop hating the different, the other, then we’re going to have to start with children.

Once we have accepted the story we cannot escape the story's fate.

Tea is balm for the soul, don't you agree?

As he watches the sun rise, what grieves him is that he failed her. He thinks of the terror she felt. They tell him it was quick, as if that will somehow confine the horror.

You can’t be the warrior in someone else’s tragedy

But without wisdom, imagination is like a cruel taskmaster.

Confirming what you see as reality...is a true sign of your arrogance.

An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity a pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.

Woman! Come out! I have—" She looked down at the bloodless grass, embarrassed. "I have come to rescue you," she finally said, as if admitting that she were covered in boils.

France has no friends, only interests.

Duck, big brother! Here comes another day!

I've done my best to drive you away, Sadie," he said suddenly. "But you've never left me.

You hear about those stories where a person is married to someone and they have another family - that's pretty much unforgivable!