Why do grown-ups think it's easier for children to bear secrets than the truth? Don't they know about the horror stories we imagine to explain the secrets?

Accursed, blasted, heartless things [books]! Full of empty promises, full of false lures, always making you hungry, never satisfying you, never!

I will try to write books until I drop dead.

Desperate? So what? I'm desperate, too!" Fenoglio snapped at her. "My story is foundering in misfortune, and these hands here," he said holding them out to her, "don't want to write anymore! I'm afraid of words Meggie! 'Once they were like honey, now they're poison, pure poison! But what is a writer who doesn't love words anymore? What have I come to? This story is devouring me, crushing me, and I'm it's creator!

Ten minutes can be a long time when you're waiting with a beating heart for something you don't understand, something you don't really want to know.

It's a cruel world, don't you think?

Many [book] even lay flat in the floor open. Their spines upward. Elinor couldn't bear to look! Didn't the monster know that was the way to break a book's neck?