I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.

Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not the merits of who receives them.

They (fables) teach us that human beings learn and absorb ideas and concepts through narrative, through stories, not through lessons or theoretical speeches.

Television is the Antichrist, and I can assure you after only three or four generations, people will no longer even know how to fart on their own and humans will return to medieval savagery and to the general state of imbecility that slugs overcame back in the Pleistocene era. Our world will not die as a result of the bomb...it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke of everything and a lousy joke at that.

In those days, Christmas still retained a certain aura of magic and mystery. The powdery light of winter, the hopeful expressions of people who lived among shadows and silence, lent that setting a slight air of promise in which at least children and those who had learned the art of forgetting could still believe.

It's only worth staying in bed if you're young and in good company.

Childhood devotions make unfaithful and fickle lovers.