Goblins burrowed in the earth, elves sang songs in the trees: Those were the obvious wonders of reading, but behind them lay the fundamental marvel that, in stories, words could command things to be.
Francis SpuffordI can always tell when you're reading somewhere in the house,' my mother used to say. 'There's a special silence, a reading silence.
Francis SpuffordBelief demands that you dispense with illusion after illusion, while contemporary common sense requires continual, fluffy pretending - pretending that might as well be systematic, it's so thoroughly incentivised by our culture.
Francis Spufford