I know there are people who don't read fiction at all, and I find it hard to understand how they can bear to be inside the same head all the time.

People with ambition don't give a damn what other people think of them.

Of course I loved books more than people.

All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.

Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words on the other hand, were a lifeline. They left their hushed rhythm behind, a counter to the slow in and out of Emmeline's breathing.

There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere.

Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so.