Quotes from Arthur Ransome

Susan read her letter. 'Mother says I must give you plenty of lettuces and peas and things, or else you'll all get scurvy. What is scurvy?

BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN

You write not for children but for yourself. And if by good fortune children enjoy what you enjoy, why then you are a writer of children's books.

Who would wave a flag to be rescued if they had a desert island of their own? That was the thing that spoilt Robinson Crusoe . In the end he came home. There never ought to be an end.

Grab a chance and you won't be sorry for what might have been

The island had come to seem one of those places seen from the train that belong to a life in which we shall never take part.

Swallows and Amazons for-ever!

They found, like many explorers before them, that somehow, in their absence, they had got into trouble at home.

Better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won't drown.

The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting place.

Wild Cat Island

Things might have been a lot worse. Don't you worry about it overmuch. When a thing's done, it's done, and if it's not done right, do it differently next time.

No one wants to row who has ever sailed.

Things might have been a lot worse. Don't you worry about it overmuch. When a thing's done, it's done, and if it's not done right, do it differently next time. Worrying never made a sailor.

But the big hills up at the lake helped to make him feel that the houseboat man did not matter. The hills had been there before Captain Flint. They would be there for ever. That, somehow was comforting.

What's hit's history: what's missed's mystery.

A pigeon a day keeps the natives away.

It was like exploring a place that you have seen in a dream, where everything is just where you expect it and yet everything is a surprise.

P...U...D...D...I...N...G Pudding, said Roger. They've kept some for us. She hasn't finished the word, said Dick. Titty was reading steadily on. H...E...A...D...S...End of word

Only, the beastly Arctic won't freeze

The storm came pretty soon, said John. They won't have got much further before it caught them. We may find them any minute. They'll have got off the ice the moment the snow began. If only they had sense, said Susan. But they haven't got any, not that sort. People oughtn't to be allowed to be brought up in towns.

THE KNICKERBOCKERBREAKER

Well we shan't be at school for ever, said Nancy. We'll be grown up, and then we'll live here all the year round.... ...I shall be going to sea someday, said John, and so will Roger. But we'll always come back here on leave. I shall bring my monkey, said Roger. And the parrot shall always come, said Titty.

it seemed as if the ebb would never stop. Tom