“It’s like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction – every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it’s really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier.”
“But my brother said that, underneath, he thought they were frightened. It was because they were frightened, he thought, that they had grown so small. Each generation had become smaller and smaller, and more and more hidden. In the olden days, it seems, and in some parts of England, our ancestors talked quite openly about the “little people.”
“I’m tired and angry at me. For letting myself get smaller and smaller in the hopes that he would notice me more. But how can someone notice you if you keep getting smaller?”
“ ‘I’m shrinking. Getting smaller,’ said Treehorn. ‘If you want to pretend you’re shrinking, that’s all right,’ said Treehorn’s mother, ‘as long as you don’t do it at the table.’ “
“I locked Orual up or laid her asleep as best I could somewhere deep down inside me; she lay curled there. It was like being with child, but reversed; the thing I carried in me grew slowly smaller and less alive.”
“He had lost the Minnow to her rightful and unpleasant owner; he would have to go ashore and fight the owner for calling him a thief, and, as he was the smaller boy, he would probably be beaten.”
“While the bear slept he gradually began to grow smaller. Inch by inch and little by little Bruce dwindled away. He kept shrinking and shriveling until he was down to the size of a possum. And still he kept shrinking, When the diminishing spell was finally finished the bear had dwindled all the way down to the size of a chipmunk.”