The Toymakers Quotes

“Running away was not like it was in stories. People did not try and stop you. They did not give chase. The thing people didn't understand was that you had to decide what you were running away from. Most of the time it wasn't mothers or fathers or monsters or villains; most of the time you were running away from that little voice inside your head, the one telling you to stay where you are, that everything will turn out all right.”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“Once upon a time, all of us, no matter what we've grown up to do or who we've grown up to be, were little boys and girls, happy with nothing more than bouncing a ball against a wall”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“The most terrible things can happen to a man, but he’ll never lose himself if he remembers he was once a child.”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“Mightn’t it be, Cathy, that, until you’ve seen the dark, you don’t really know the light?”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“As we are taught disease spreads from hand to hand so too does Knowledge and Freedom.”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“I don’t have to explain myself to you. This is my Emporium, mine, and you’re here at my consent or not at all. But, since you’ve flaunted your way in here to make your accusations, I’ll have you know this: I was the first to sign up. I was at the recruiting office when summer was still high. I’d be in France now, doing my part for my King and my Country, if they would have had me. Coward? Walk into my Emporium and call me a coward? I’m no coward, madam. My name is Emil Godman and, what’s more, I am no one’s young man. I am nobody’s, do you hear? I’m not in danger of neglecting a soul, because I don’t have a soul I could neglect! Do you understand!?”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“A toy cannot save a life, but it can save a soul.”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“Because this is how the world ends: not in the falling incendiaries of an aerial attack, not in a storm of toy soldiers laying waste to the gods who brought them into being, but in the banal letters of a bank. Where once was magic: now only economics.”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“Papa Jack whispered, ‘But not the same. Never the same. It all does something to you. The little things as well as the big. You might go to sleep one person and wake so slightly different, and all because of a dream you had. You can’t hope to go back. Men lose themselves trying it.”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“Whatever happens out there, it won’t be like the Long War. What sort of madness might that be? To wind up a battalion of living things and march them at one another, as if that might win a war?”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“These decisions, they are the magic we call Life.”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“Mightn't it be, Cathy, that, until you've seen the dark, you don't really know the light?”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“The most terrible thing can happen to a man but he'll never lose himself if he remembers he was once a child.”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“Given the excuse, a certain sort of man would put a stone through your window if you so much as had a different colour eye.”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“Bitterness was a kind of privilege afforded to those in better times.”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“Running was easy, she decided; but every runaway had to arrive, and arriving seemed the most difficult thing of all.”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“[...] these soldiers don't have to do his bidding any more, [...]. They don't have to fight in any Long Wars. Why, they don't have to be soldiers at all. They can take control, be whatever they want to be. My Martha, the world is bored of armies. It can't bear another boy to die. It doesn't need killing. It needs farmers and tinkers. Shepherds and railwaymen and grocers. It's time we set the soldiers free.”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“All the love in the world doesn't match a little scrap of understanding.”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“The most terrible things can happen to a man, but he'll never lose himself if he remembers he was once a child.”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

“And yet, every time she fingered the pinecone ballerina, she felt the same as those prisoners had done.”
― Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers: Dark, enchanting and utterly gripping'