Quotes from James M. Barrie

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.

So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land!

Odd things happen to all of us on our way through life without our noticing for a time that they have happened.

Strength instead of being the lusty child of passion, grows by grappling with and subduing them.

I know not, sir, whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he did not, it seems to me that he missed the opportunity of his life.

Feeling that Peter was on his way back, the Neverland had again woke into life. We ought to use the pluperfect and say wakened, but woke is better and was always used by Peter.

Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe. If you believe, clap your hands!

We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.

You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.

When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.

I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it? Time is chasing after all of us.

There is a saying in the Neverland that,every time you breathe, a grown-up dies.

When a new baby laughs for the first time a new fairy is born, and as there are always new babies there are always new fairies.

Our heroine knew that the mother would always leave the window open for her children to fly back by; so they stayed away for years and had a lovely time.

There are, I dare say, many lovers who would never have been drawn to each other had they met for the first time, as, say, they met the second time.

Our life is a book to which we add daily, until suddenly we are finished, and then the manuscript is burned.

See," he said, "the arrow struck against this. It is the kiss I gave her. It has saved her life.

Life is a cup of tea; the more heartily we drink the sooner we reach the dregs.

A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don't find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.

Every time you say you don't believe in fairies, a fairy dies.

Never is an awfully long time.

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.

For several days after my first book was published, I carried it about in my pocket and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure the ink had not faded.

After a time he fell asleep, and some unsteady fairies had to climb over him on their way home from an orgy.