Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”
- Date
- 1906
- Local voice
- Fictional narrator · Narrator
Meaning of “the moment you doubt whether you can fly,…”
Inside Barrie's fantasy narration, Peter's ability to fly is tied to undivided belief in that ability; as a quotation, the line works as a literary image of doubt interrupting action rather than as a literal psychological law.
Where does it come from?
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, Project Gutenberg #26998. The narrator comments on Peter after he feels shunned by the birds, explaining that losing faith in his power to fly would itself end that power within the story's fantasy logic. The line is narrator voice, not an autobiographical claim by Barrie.
Why the local voice matters
The narrator generalizes from Peter’s loss of faith in his ability to fly in Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens; the sentence belongs to the fantasy’s narrator voice.
