Quotes by J.M. Barrie

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 dont find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.

On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.

Always try to be a little kinder than is necessary.

Girls are much too clever to fall out of their prams

Peter was a superb swordsman, and parried with dazzling rapidity; ever and anon he followed up a feint with a lunge that got past his foes defense, but his shorter reach stood him in ill stead, and he could not drive the steel home

It is humiliating to have to confess that this conceit of Peter was one of his most fascinating qualities. To put it with brutal frankness, there never was a cockier boy.

Good form without knowing it is the best form of all.

All her tormentings of me turned suddenly into sweetnesses, and who could torment like this exquisite fury, wondering in sudden flame why she could give herself to anyone, while I wondered only why she could give herself to me. It may be that I wondered over-much. Perhaps that was why I lost her.

He was top-heavy with conceit.

She says she glories in being abandoned

The fairies, as their custom, clapped their hands with delight over their cleverness, and they were so madly in love with the little house that they could not bear to think they had finished it.

‎She was not a little girl heart-broken about him; she was a grown woman smiling at it all, but they were wet smiles.

POLICEMAN. Good luck. (She finds it easiest just to nod in reply) I wish I was a Prince.

Nonsense. Young boys should never be sent to bed. They always wake up a day older, and then before you know it, theyre grown.

Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be rewarded instead of smacked.

Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John’s, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingos flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by its parents...

A strange smile was playing about his face, and Wendy saw it and shuddered. While that smile was on his face no one dared address him; all they could do was to stand ready to obey.

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

You need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up. In the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than the other girls.

Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience... and pimples.