Quotes from Jill Paton Walsh

The protagonist of folktale is always, and intensely, a young person moving through ordeals into adult life. . . . and this is why there are no wicked stepchildren in the tales.

Bunter came with me in the role of a friend. A role he has always played to perfection." "It does not require dissimulation, my lord," said Bunter. "Thank you," said Peter.

Harriet said, "You shouldn't have reminded me to sign that book, Peter." "Why ever not? Have you suddenly become bashful about your hard-earned glories?" "Because it watn's hers," said Harriet. "It was a library copy." "Stroke of luck for the ratepaers of the City of Westminster," he said, grinning.

And may God better understand and love us, than we, in our weakness, can do him.

It's just that we wear rose-coloured spectacles when we return here [to Oxford] – we are dazzled by the foolish idealism of our youthful years.

If you tell someone a secret, and ask them to keep it secret, you are asking them to display a discretion you are unable to display yourself.

One of my colleagues in Birmingham University, where I come from,' said Trevair, 'is a moral philosopher. He taught me that one of the ways to judge a course of action is to consider what company it puts one in. I doubt if that's very good philosophy, but I find it a good rule of thumb.

It's amazing […] how perfectly honest people who would starve rather than steal sixpence, will steal books without compunction.

allowed themselves to reinhabit themselves

Peter, leaving the library with a light step, and skipping down the stairs like an elderly Fred Astaire.

A]fter all, the position of a reader in a book is very like that occupied by angels in the world, when angels still had any credibility. Yours is, like theirs, a hovering, gravely attentive presence, observing everything, from whom nothing is concealed, for angels are very bright mirrors. Hearts and minds are as open as the landscape to their view, as to yours; like them you are in the fabled world invisible.

Meanwhile, we stooped and picked the sharp plants

Clever readers, of course, would already have seen through the entire thing, and for them the ending would lack surprise. But Harriet knew from experience that the pleasures of having guessed it all, with the concomitant pleasure of feeling clever, would make up for that as long as matters were not humiliatingly easy to guess.

Serial murder is very uncommon, Peter,' said Charles. 'But the major

Where there's a will there's relations. Misquoted from the Book of Proverbs

Granted, a man may smile and smile and be a villain, but it takes nerve.

The protagonist of folktale is always, and intensely, a young person moving through ordeals into adult life. . . . and this is why there are no wicked stepchildren in the tales.