What on earth have you packed in here? Bricks?" asked Mo as he carried Meggie's book-box out of the house. You're the one who says books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them," said Meggie.

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

I prefer a story that has the good sense to stay on the page where it belongs. - Elinor

Mo could paint pictures in the empty air with his voice alone.

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?

Don't let it worry you, not being able to speak,'Dustfinger had often told her. 'People tend not to listen anyway, right?

They're all cruel,' he said. 'The world I come from, the world you come from, and this one, too. Maybe the people don't see the cruelty in your world right away, it's better hidden, but it's there all the same.