- Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. - I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them.
- So I lived my life alone, without anyone that I could really talk to - I was more isolated than a shipwrecked sailor on a raft in the middle of the ocean. - When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey.
- It was from words dropped by chance that, little by little, everything was revealed to me. - I like my misfortunes to be taken seriously. - "Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far . . ."
- They never say to you, "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?" - I have suffered too much grief in setting down these memories. - Perhaps I am a little like the grown-ups. I have had to grow old.
- But seeds are invisible. - They sleep deep in the heart of the earth's darkness, until some one among them is seized with the desire to awaken. - It spreads over the entire planet. It bores clear through it with its roots.
- "You know--one loves the sunset, when one is so sad . . ."
- "The thorns are of no use at all. Flowers have thorns just for spite!" - "Flowers are weak creatures. They are naïve." - "But he is not a man--he is a mushroom!" - try to understand why the flowers go to so much trouble to grow thorns which are never of any use to them - "If someone loves a flower, [...] it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars." - in one moment all his stars will be darkened - I took him in my arms, and rocked him. - where I could overtake him and go on hand in hand with him once more. - It is such a secret place, the land of tears.
- It was only in the full radiance of her beauty that she wished to appear. - "And I was born at the same moment as the sun . . ." - "I am not at all afraid of tigers" - Embarrassed over having let herself be caught on the verge of such a naïve untruth, she coughed two or three times - He had taken seriously words which were without importance, and it made him very unhappy.
- But on this last morning all these familiar tasks seemed very precious to him. - He did not understand this quiet sweetness. - "Of course I love you. It is my fault that you have not known it all the while." - "And if not the butterflies--and the caterpillars--who will call upon me?"