Eva Ibbotson quotes:

And so they played some of the world's loveliest piano music - the exiled homesick girl, the humiliated, tired old man. Not properly. Better than that.

That's silly, Anna," said the Honorable Olive. "Being afraid is silly, you know it is.

Shadows are cool and peaceful places for those whose minds are overstocked with treasure.

When you're sad, my Little Star, go out of doors. It's always better underneath the open sky.

One must not judge other cultures by the standars of one's one,' said Aunt Hilda

She stood looking carefully at the labeled portraits Ursala had put up: Little Crow, Chief of the Santees, Geronimo, last of the Apaches, and Ursala's favorite, Big Foot, dying in the snow at Wounded Knee. "Isn't that where the massacre was?" asked Ellen. "Yes. I'm going to go there when I'm grown up. To Wounded Knee." "That seems sensible," said Ellen.

Loneliness had taught Harriet that there was always someone who understood - it was just so often that they were dead, and in a book.

Slowly, Anna put up a hand to his muzzle and began to scratch that spot behind the ear where large dogs keep their souls.

For whether a place is a heaven or a hell rests in yourself, and those who go with courage may find themselves in paradise.

She wanted to make him swear; to have a kind of ceremony-- but then she saw his face as he looked out over the Island and saw that he loved it as she did, and she knew for certain they would both be back.

I want to live like music sounds."- Ruth

It's true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get in a person's blood even if he doesn't remember having them.

This is worse than Hollywood, he thought. A girl comes in with a pork chop and I write a song for her.

There are those who dance the notes and those who dance the music.

There are those who dance the notes, and those who dance the music.

He was just drifting off to sleep when it occurred to him that perhaps the dog was not so ordinary after all. Perhaps he was someone the ogre had changed, and Ivo was going to spend the night hugging a headmaster or a tax inspector

Please, God,' Ruth would pray, 'don't let me be competitive. Let me realize what a privilege it is to study. Let me remember that knowledge must be pursued for its own sake and please, please stop me wanting to beat Verena Plackett in the exams.' She prayed hard and she meant what she said. But God was busy that autumn as the International Brigade came back, defeated, from Spain, Hitler's bestialities increased, and sparrows everywhere continued to fall.

For an instant she felt his touch on her cheek then he stepped back. There that was my ration for all eternity. People have died for less I dare say.

But she had to know words. She had to know everything.

one of the sisters started shaving her legs and marrying tax inspectors, so she was no good.

Pauline kept a scrapbook into which she pasted important articles that she had cut out of the newspapers. These were about the courageous deeds that had been done by people even if they only had one leg or couldn't see or had been dropped on their heads when they were babies. 'It's to make me brave,' she'd explained to Annika.

She was so intelligent that she could think herself into beauty. Intelligence...they don't talk about it much, the poets, but when a woman is intelligent and passionate and good...

To show too much joy in a place such as this would be unseemly but, as he padded toward her, his tail was extended in a manner which would make wagging possible should all go as expected.

They were steaming out of the station before Maia asked, 'Was it books in the trunk?' 'It was books, admitted Miss Minton. And Maia said, 'Good.

What are you afraid of then? Not Being able to see, I think not seeing because your obsessed by something that blots out the world.

It was a heavenly summer, the summer in which France fell and the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk. Leaves were never such an intense and iridescent green; sunlight glinted on flower-studded meadows as the Germans encircled the Maginot Line and overran not only France but Belgium and Holland. Birdsong filled the air in the lull between bursts of gunfire and accompanied the fleeing refugees who blocked the roads. It was as though the weather was preparing a glorious requiem for the death of Europe.

Herr Altenburg, I can't; I have vertigo.' And Marek looked at him: 'All right - I'll get the chemist to fix me something.

The news should have terrified her, but it was difficult to be frightened of anything when she was sitting so close to Rom. 'I thought we had convinced him that I was leading a blameless life?' 'We had, till you burst out of that damnable cake.

She's like snow in Russian," said Anna. "Snow in the evening when the sun sets and it looks like Alpengluhen, you know? And if snow had a scent it would smell like that [the rose]....

The dowager rose and slipped from her pew. There was the sound of tearing silk as she threw up her arms to embrace her son. Then: "Oh, Rupert, darling," she exclaimed in tones of theatrical despair, "don't you see? The game's up!

Just because we've never done it doesn't mean we can't do it.