Iona Opie > Quotes

“Mother Goose will show newcomers to this world how astonishing, beautiful, capricious, dancy, eccentric, funny, goluptious, haphazard, intertwingled, joyous, kindly, loving, melodious, naughty, outrageous, pomsidillious, querimonious, romantic, silly, tremendous, unexpected, vertiginous, wonderful, x-citing, yo-heave-ho-ish, and zany it is.”
― Iona Opie, My Very First Mother Goose

“Daisy, Daisy, the coppers are after you,
If they catch you they'll give you a month or two,
They'll tie you up with wi-er
Behind the Black Mari-er,
So ring your bell
And pedal like hell
On a bicycle made for two.”
― Iona Opie, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren

“If you can't go to Hollywood
You don't have to cry;
Clark Gable is good looking
But so am I.”
― Iona Opie, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren

“The literature of childhood abounds with evidence that the peaks of a child's experience are not visits to the cinema, or even family outings to the sea, but occasions when he escapes into places that are disused and overgrown and silent. To a child there is more joy in a rubbish tip than a flowery rockery, in a fallen tree than a piece of statuary, in a muddy track than a gravel path.”
― Iona Opie, Children's Games in Street & Playground