I thought of the bowl of water my mother taught me to look into. It was true, everything a person ever needed to know was right there in a single bowl small enough to fit in the palm of one hand.

I hate it when people tell me the end of the story because my mother always read the last page of a novel first to see whether she wanted to read it. It was a strange reading habit.

I must keep my head and not give in to desire, for desire is what causes women to drown.

Every time someone forgets, someone else disappears,' my brother wrote.

Books may well be the only true magic.

He stepped off the pavement like a man jumping off a bridge, as calm as a swimmer with an ocean out below. Lucy had known what he was going to do the instant their eyes met. She'd know what he intended because she would have done the very same thing if she'd had his courage. Nothing was going to break his fall.

What I like about fairy tales is the language and the matter-of-fact way of introducing magic, where it's accepted that a fox could talk or a gate could just appear in a wall. I think fairy tales are so psychological.