We're in a strange situation where people either don't read at all or they read a lot. There's a huge gap in between. That's something that would be good to bridge so it doesn't have to be one thing or the other. Books could be part of life in a more relaxed way. I'd like to see that.

Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets?

There's no such thing as autobiography, there's only art and lies

To create a past that seemed authentic but would be a fiction, you need an invented language.

Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.

The only sex education my mother ever gave me was the injunction: 'Never let a boy touch you down there.' I had no idea what she meant. She seemed to be referring to my knees.

Odd to think that the piece of you I know best is already dead. The cells on the surface of your skin are thin and flat without the blood vessels or nerve endings. Dead cells, thickest on the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet.