Nothing chased nightmares away faster than the rustle of printed paper.

From the tower battlements, Dustfinger looked down on a lake as black as night, where the reflection of the castle swam in a sea of stars. The wind passing over his unscarred face was cold from the snow of the surrounding mountains, and Dustfinger relished life as if he were tasting it for the first time. The longing it brought, and the desire. All the bitterness, all the sweetness, even if it was only for a while, never for more than a while, everything gained and lost, lost and found again.

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

Read – and be curious. And if somebody says to you: 'Things are this way. You can't change it' - don't believe a word.

Life was more difficult in Inkheart, yet it seemed to Meggie that with every new day Fenoglio's story was spinning a magic spell around her heart, sticky as a spider's web and enchantingly beautiful.

Because by now Elinor had understood this, too: A longing for books was nothing compared with what you could feel for human beings. The books told you about that feeling. The books spoke of love, and it was wonderful to listen to them, but they were no substitute for love itself. They couldn't kiss her like Meggie, they couldn't hug her like Resa, they couldn't laugh like Mortimer. Poor books, poor Elinor.

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