As readers, we have gone from learning a precious craft whose secret was held by a jealous few, to taking for granted a skin that has become subordinate to principles of mindless financial profit or mechanical efficiency, a skill for which governments care almost nothing.

One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.

Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.

In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories.

A writer stops writing the moment he or she puts the last full stop to their text, and at that point the book is in limbo and doesn't come to life until the reader picks it up and the reader flips the pages.

In any of my pages in any of my books may life a perfect account of my secret experience of the world.

From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story.