I do tend to feel more connected to dead writers, perhaps because they have finished their work.

I always wanted to be a writer! But I wanted to do other things, too - be a psychologist, a librarian, et cetera. Now Ive decided that reading fiction that features characters who are in those professions will do.

I'm never sad when a friend goes far away, because whichever city or country that friend goes to, they turn the place friendly. They turn a suspicious-looking name on the map into a place where a welcome can be found. Maybe the friend will talk about you sometimes, to other friends that live around him, and then that's almost as good as being there yourself. You're in several places at once! In fact, my daughter, I would even go so far as to say that the further away your friends, and the more spread out they are the better your chances of going safely through the world.

I see all mythology as one tradition, a way of disseminating knowledge that must come to us in code so that we can live sanely with it, since some forms of knowledge are too dark, or too complex, to be plainly spoken. And so we have these weird (and also sometimes entertaining and surprising and heartening) tales that belong to all of us.

You don’t return people’s smiles—it’s perfectly clear to you that people can smile and smile and still be villains.

Solitary people, these book lovers. I think it's swell that there are people you don't have to worry about when you don't see them for a long time, you don't have to wonder what they do, how they're getting along with themselves. You just know that they're all right, and probably doing something they like.

I know of witches who whistle at different pitches, calling things that don't have names.