I always knew that I wanted to live with books, even as a child, because we traveled a lot. Home was the book to which I came back every evening.

Unicorns, dragons, witches may be creatures conjured up in dreams, but on the page their needs, joys, anguishes, and redemptions should be just as true as those of Madame Bovary or Martin Chuzzlewit.

In no way am I demeaning writing or any other form of art because it's popular. What I'm saying is that anything fed into the industrial machinery to comply with rules of size and length and shelf-life has a hard time surviving as art.

Unpacking books is a revelatory activity.

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

But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence.

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.