A reader doesn't really see the characters in a story; he feels them.

The spoken word is nothing. It hardly lives longer than an insect! Only the written word is eternal. - Balbulus

There could be few men whose love for a woman had been written on his face with a knife.

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.

Writing stories is a kind of magic, too.

I remember the feeling. Whenever my father got so absorbed in a book that we might have been in visible I felt like taking a pair of scissors and cutting it up.

The truth's not pretty of course. No one likes to look it in the face.