Pan: quotes from J.M. Barrie's tale

"All children, except one, grow up."

"Even Slightly tried to tell a story that night, but the beginning was so fearfully dull that it appalled not only the others but himself, and he said happily: 'Yes, it is a dull beginning. I say, let us pretend that it is the end.'"

"'Wendy,' remonstrated Michael, 'I'm too big for a cradle.'
'I must have somebody in a cradle,' she said almost tartly, 'and you are the littlest. A cradle is such a nice homely thing to have about a house.'"

"Next moment he was standing erect on the rock agian, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, 'To die will be an awfully big adventure.'"

"'He sighs,' said Smee.
"'He sighs again,' said Starkey.
'And yet a third time he sighs,' said Smee.
Then at last he spoke passionately.
'The game's up,' he cried, 'those boys have found a mother.'"

"'It is a princely scheme,' cried Hook, and at once it took practical shape in his great brain. 'We will seize the children and carry them to the boat: the boys we will make walk the plank, and Wendy shall be our mother.' Again Wendy forgot herself. 'Never!' she cried, and bobbed."

"To see Peter doing nothing on a stool was a great sight; he could not help looking solemn at such times, to sit still seemed to him such a comic thing to do. He boasted that he had gone walking for the good of his health."

"When she sat down to a basketful of their stockings, every heel with a hole in it, she would fling up her arms and exclaim, 'Oh dear, I am sure I sometimes think that spinsters are to be envied!' Her face beamed when she exclaimed this."

"The bed was tilted against the wall by day, and let down at 6:30, when it filled nearly half the room; and all the boys slept in it, except Michael, lying like sardines in a tin. There was a strict rule against turning round until one gave the signal, when all turned at once."

"Then all went on their knees, and holding out their arms cried, 'O Wendy lady, be our mother.'"

"'Curly,' said Peter in his most captainy voice, 'see that these boys help in the building of the house.'
'Ay, ay, sir.'
'Build a house?' exclaimed John.
'For the Wendy,' said Curly.
'For Wendy?' John said, aghast. 'Why, she is only a girl!'
'That,' explained Curly, 'is why we are her servants.'"

"'All I remember about my mother,' Nibs told them, 'is that she often said to my father, "Oh, how I wish I had a cheque-book of my own!" I don't know what a cheque-book is, but I should just love to give my mother one.'"

"Slightly was the first to speak. 'This is no bird,' he said in a scared voice. 'I think it must be a lady.'
'A lady?' said Tootles, and fell a-trembling.
'And we have killed her,' Nibs said hoarsely.
They all whipped off their caps.
'Now I see,' Curly said; 'Peter was bringing her to us.' He threw himself sorrowfully on the ground.
'A lady to take care of us at last,' said one of the twins, 'and you have killed her!'"

"In the midst of them, the blackest and largest in that dark setting, reclined James Hook, or as he wrote himself, Jas. Hook, of whom it is said he was the only man that the Sea-Cook feared."

Tink was not all bad; or, rather, she was all bad just now, but, on the other hand, sometimes she was all good. Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time."

"'Second to the right, and straight on till morning.' That, Peter had told Wendy, was the way to the Neverland; but even birds, carrying maps and cosulting them at windy corners, could not have sighted it with these instructions. Peter, you see, just said anything that came into his head."

"'I say, how do you do it?' asked John, rubbing his knee. He was quite a practical boy.
'You just think lovely wonderful thoughts,' Peter explained, 'and they lift you up in the air.'"

"'I think,' she said, 'it is perfectly lovely the way you talk about girls; John there just despises us.'
For reply Peter rose and kicked John out of bed, blankets and all. This seemed to Wendy rather forward for a first meeting, and she told him with spirit that he was not captain in her house. However, John continued to sleep so placidly on the floor that she allowed him to remain there. 'I know you meant to be kind,' she said, relenting, 'so you may give me a kiss.'
For a moment she had forgotten his ignorance about kisses."

“The lateness of the hour was almost the biggest thing of all. She got them to bed in the pirates’ bunks pretty quickly, you may be sure; all but Peter, who strutted up and down on the deck, until at last he fell asleep by the side of Long Tom. He had one of his dreams that night, and cried in his sleep for a long time, and Wendy held him tight.”

"It is a nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day."

"Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner."

“When Margaret [Wendy’s granddaughter] grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter’s mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.”

These quotes, taken from one of the grandest books ever written by the pen of man, must be sufficient testimony to the truth of the matter. Who am I to expound on a work so near perfection?