Michael, "I never expected the wish to come true."

The Trout, "Great Oceans! Why bother to wish it, then? I call that simply a waste of time.

Wishing, like sipping a glass of punch, or pulling aside a bearskin rug in order to access a hidden trapdoor in the floor, is merely a quiet way to spend one's time before the candles are extinguished on one's birthday cake.

If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the cross-roads.

A very excellent and worthy person, thoroughly reliable in every particular.

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

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