Tom's Midnight Garden Quotes
"If, standing alone on the back doorstep, Tom allowed himself to weep tears, they were tears of anger."
"Tom gazed, and then turned back into the house."
"Remember that you will be a visitor, and do try—oh, what can I say?—try to be good."
"I’d rather have had measles with Peter—much rather!"
"Will you be quiet, Tom!’ shouted his uncle, suddenly losing his temper."
"He had borne it for what seemed many nights, but suddenly, tonight, he could bear it no more."
"Uncle Alan said sharply, ‘All children sleep;’ and Aunt Gwen added more gently: ‘It’s just your imagination, Tom.’"
"In the quiet, they could hear, from indoors, the ticking of the grandfather clock, and the sound of someone shuffling down the stairs."
"And the grandfather clock still went on striking, as if it had lost all count of time; and, while it struck, Tom, with joy in his heart, drew the bolt, turned the door-handle, opened the door and walked out into his garden, that he knew was waiting for him."
"There is a time, between night and day, when landscapes sleep."
"Every night now Tom slipped downstairs to the garden."
"He always remembered his first tree in this garden—one of the yews round the lawn. He had never climbed a yew before, and was inclined to think ever afterwards that yews were best."
"Visibility … invisibility … If he were invisible to the people of the garden, he was not completely so at least to some of the other creatures."
"Deliberately he set his side against the door, shoulder, hip and heel, and pressed."
"For all good things I thank the Lord; and may He keep me from all the works of the Devil that he hurt me not."
"The truth was that Tom was now a little lacking courage."
"It means, to have the Past again, and no one can have that. Time isn’t like that."
"The garden and its surroundings, then, were not, in themselves, outside the natural order of things; nor was Tom alarmed by his own unnatural abilities."
"All I have told you is true," he wrote, "about the door and being invisible and the fir-tree. It is all very strange, but I don’t mind any of it."
"Tom was bitterly disappointed. He had not minded being invisible to the others—to the maid, and the severe-looking woman, and the gardener, and the little girl, and even to Hubert (who looked stupidly grown-up) and to Edgar (whom Tom actually disliked). But he would have liked to have made himself known to James: they could have been companions in adventure."
"Tom was vexed; but he resolved not to let this disappointment spoil his enjoyment of the garden."
"The only surprise there was the boundary: a river, clear, gentle-flowing, shallow, and green with reeds and water-plants."
"Don't hurry them. We'll drive 'em out into the orchard, where they can't do harm, and then I'll get 'em round into that old meadow again."
"The geese were allowing themselves to be moved along, their heads high and ceaselessly turning, the goslings going ahead."
"Altogether, the only damage—but it remained considerable—was to the flower-beds and the lawn."
"A frenziedly angry gander, with his wives by his side, and his goslings behind him and even under him, is a daunting sight."
"Her face was white, so that her eyes and hair appeared blacker than ever."
"All the persons that her fancy had ever brought into this garden—Biblical heroes and fairies and the people of legend and hearsay and her own imagination—all her friends fell away from her now."
"Her aunt did not ask whether she had made the gap and the tunnel, and why; she asked none of the questions that Tom had expected; she asked no questions at all."
"In the flat, Time was marching steadily onwards in the way it is supposed to go: from minute to minute, from hour to hour, from day to day."
"The clock may well have been here a long time, as you say, and during that time the screws rusted up."
"Every night he was able to steal downstairs as usual, into the garden; and there the feverishness of his chill always left him, as though the very greenness of trees and plants and grass cooled his blood."
"He turned his face away, because he expected Hatty’s aunt to strike her; but she did not."
"The possibility of Hatty’s being a ghost stayed in his mind, however—at the back of his mind."
"There was something else too—something almost unbelievable that he felt he would understand in another instant; something familiar in her voice and way of speaking; something in the way she was…"
"They teased the birds of the garden—Tom was particularly good at surprising them, and at hoaxing the watchful jay; yet they protected them against all comers, too."
"Now, from his wall-top, he saw what seemed to be the whole world."
"Tom felt among many strangers, and lonely. There was no Hatty here, and his secret fear was that there might be no Hatty anywhere."
"He needed a great deal of courage to go forward and set his foot on the bottom step of that soft, silent stair."
"Ghosts had always died before they became so—Tom’s reasoning ran in anxious, confused circles."
"Surely, in these special circumstances, dishonest methods were excusable."
"Thankful! But what was she doing, to have the accident? Climbing trees, if you please! Has she no sense of what is fitting to her sex and to her age now?"
"You can say what you like to her; you can do what you like with her; and the less I see of her, the better."
"I wish I could do that!" she sighed at Tom, and sank back among her pillows.
"He was about to climb into his cold bed, when he remembered the bedroom slipper that wedged the flat door open."
"Time was so long from now until then; so short from now until Saturday."
"So she did, in part, for Tom had not at all wanted to become the Kitsons’ child and to stop belonging to his own family."
"But, all the same, some desperate remedy must be found for his now desperate situation."
"Proof! cried Uncle Alan; and for a moment Tom thought he was going to be angry again, but he controlled himself."
"These skates are the property of Harriet Melbourne but she leaves them in this place in fulfilment of a promise she once made to a little boy."
"Time here would stand still at Thursday, and wait for him; it would only start again if he left the garden and came back to the flat."
"The garden will always be here. It will never change."
"You woke me. I knew it was Tom calling to me for help, although I didn't understand, then. I couldn't believe you were real, until I saw you this morning."
"We're both real; Then and Now. It's as the angel said: Time No Longer."