You know what they say: When people start burning books they'll soon burn human beings.

Fire and water," he said, "don't really mix. You could say they're incompatible. But when they do love each other, they love passionately.

So what? All writers are lunatics!

He longed for the deep as she longed for the night sky and for white lilies floating on water -- although she still tried to convince herself that love alone could feed her soul.

She had only to open a door, nothing but a door between the words,just large enough for her and Farid to pass through.

All books are in safe hands with me. They're my children, my inky children, and I look after them well. I keep the sunlight away from their pages, I dust and protect them from hungry hookworms and grubby human fingers.

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.