The Great Expectations of Matilda

pg 186-187 (Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones)
Broken Dreams - The girl next to where I grew up used to sleepwalk. It was amazing how far she would get-still fast asleep. One time she paddled a canoe out to the reef, came in, and went back to her sleeping mat. Or else you'd see her marching up the beach like she was late for church. Once we found her in our house sitting at the table, her eyes closed, while every other part of her suggested she was waiting to be brought a cold drink. I was going to wake her, but my mum stopped me. What if she is dreaming...? Dreams are pribate, she said. And she is right. A dream is a story that no one else will get to hear or read. Thanks to dreams, in the history of the galaxy the world has been reinvented more often than there are stars. The girl in our house, though, was probably just dreaming about jumping off the wharf-and that's okay too.

pg 215
At last I knew what to do. I had to survive. This is something we all take for granted, but no matter how bad things get, the moment you are denied air you fight for it. You know at last what you need. You need air.

pg 231
People sometimes ask me "Why Dickens?," which I always take to be a gentle rebuke. I point to the one book that supplied me with another world at a time when it was desperately needed. It gave me a friend in Pip. It taught me you can slip under the skin of another just as easily as your own, even when that skin is white and belongs to a boy alive in Dickens' England. Now, if that isn't an act of magic I don't know what is.