“When I was a child, I used to think that rabbits were gnomes, and that if I held my breath and stayed quite still, I should see the fairy queen.”

“I remember her telling me once that rabbits were the gnomes in attendance to the Fairy Queen and that the stars were God's daisy chain. Perfect rot, of course.”

“as a child
i suppose
i was not quite
normal.


my happiest times were
when
i was left alone in
the house on a
saturday.”

“I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us…”

“So you think I need some discipline, well, I had my share. I have been sent to my room. I've been sat in a chair. I held my tongue. I didn't plug my ears. No, I got a good talking to. And now I don't know why, but I still try to smile when they talk at me like I'm just a child. Well, I'm not a child. No, I am much younger than that. And now I have read some books and have grown quite brave. If only I could just speak up I think I would say that there is no truth. There is only you and what you make the truth.”

“I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.”

“The town was abuzz with talk of the King's animals.
We were fed regularly, and the King and Queen quite often enjoyed feeling my abdomen to see if I weren't pregnant; they were extraordinarily eager to have a whole family of little animals like us.”

“Your hair shines like gold, says my child.
You are pretty old, says my child.
And I think to myself how I used to be.
There's another wrinkle that I see.
Then he takes my hand and smiles at me.”

“I was about five and a half or six when I converted [to vegetarianism] … I was brought up the first five years of my life in London, in the working-class part of the city, where the only animals that a child is liable to see are domestic animals, or cats, or pigeons, or horses, none of which one eats. Then I was evacuated onto a farm when the war came, and billeted with this family of farmers, and I got very friendly with a rabbit—George, the rabbit. Then one day, George the rabbit was George the lunch. For a farming family there was nothing obscene about that. They kill animals; they serve them up at table and say, "Hey, yes, that's the animal you were playing with yesterday!"—which is not abnormal. It was obscene to me as a child.”

“I think maybe I was born to be a songwriter. It's quite a comfort. I wrote most of my songs to stay alive, the rest to get back in the house.”