If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, "an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.

Are you really going to catch us and take us back to Esther? We don’t belong to her, you know.” Embarrassed, Victor stared at his shoes. “Well, children all have to belong to somebody,” he muttered. “Do you belong to someone?” “That’s different.” “Because you’re a grown-up?

It's the same in real life: Notorious murderers get off scot-free and live happily all their lives, while good people die - sometimes the very best people. That's the way of the world.

You really don't understand the first thing about writing...for one thing, early in the morning is the worst possible time. the brain is like a wet sponge at that hour. And for another, real writing is a question of staring into space and waiting for the right ideas.

I live in Hamburg; that's in the north. And I live on the outskirts of town. It looks like countryside.

Sometimes it's a good thing we don't remember things half as well as books do.

I always thought it hadn't influenced me very much, but I heard from many people from England that many motives from German fairytales are to be found in my books.