There is no easy way to train an apprentice. My two tools are example and nagging.

Adverbs is a book about love, and I thought that was pretty cheerful, but people who are reading it now are telling me that it's actually quite dark.

If you feel . . . that well-read people are less likely to be evil, and a world full of people sitting quietly with good books in their hands is preferable to world filled with schisms and sirens and other noisy and troublesome things, then every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, 'The world is quiet here,' as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.

The library was one enormous room, with long, high metal shelves and the perfect quiet that libraries provide for anyone looking for an answer.

The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire.

The last time I saw you I was trying to throw thumbtacks into your cradle!

Nobody wants to fall into a safety net, because it means the structure in which they've been living is in a state of collapse and they have no choice but to tumble downwards. However, it beats the alternative.