You wouldn't believe how lonely you get. - Diana Wynne Jones

Don't you even feel how marvellous it is to have talked to one of the Little People? I said. No, not as the main thing, Grundo grunted. If you think like that, then you're treating him like something in a museum, not as a person.

I don't believe this! Peter said. Why is it respectable not to know how to do things? Is it respectable to light a fire with a bar of soap? That, Charmain said haughtily, was an accident.

Ann looked down at him, spread on the bank preparing to go to sleep, and lost her temper. "Then you should go and tell him! You should look after him! He's all alone in this wood, and he's quite small, and he doesn't even know he's not supposed to go out of it. He probably doesn't even know how to work the field to get food. You - you calmly make him up, out of blood and - and nothing, and you expect him to do your dirty work for you, and you don't even tell him the rules! You can't do that to a person!"