Please," she whispered as she opened the book, "please get me out of here just for an hour or so, please take me far, far away

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

So it's happened, I kept thinking, you're in the middle of a story exactly as you've always wanted, and it's horrible. Fear tastes quite different when you're not just reading about it, Meggie, and playing hero wasn't half as much fun as I'd expected.

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.

How fast the ears learned to tell what sounds meant, much faster than it took the eyes to decipher written words.

If I was a book, I would like to be a library book, so I would be taken home by all different sorts of kids.