There is cruelty in the world Eliza, you can see that, can't you? It surrounds us. It breathes on us. We spend our life trying to escape it.

I hope for so much from every book I read. And time and again, I find myself disappointed. I look across my bookshelves and see hundreds of titles which in my memory seem merely mediocre or second-rate. Only occasionally does a novel appear for which I feel a lasting passion, a book that I think could in time become a classic.

Bruno: "Why do you wear pajamas all day?" Shmuel: "The soldiers. They took all our clothes away." Bruno: "My dad's a soldier, but not the sort that takes people's clothes away."

... Nine-year-old boys usually turn ten at some point. It's the nineteen-year-olds who have difficulty turning twenty.

He suddenly became convinced that if he didn’t do something sensible, something to put his mind to some use, then before he knew it he would be wondering round the streets having fights with himself and inviting domestic animals to social occasions too.

Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.

I can't bear to be on a train without a book", she announced. " It's a form of self-defence in a way" .