My feelings for Raphael are mine, and mine alone. I loved him, and that is all anyone needs to know. The rest is no business of any man's.

I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways...It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being.

Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.

This world is full of broken things: broken hearts, broken promises, broken people.

For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.

The US dollar is our currency but your problem.

You mean they killed her?" asked David. They ate her," said Brother Number One. "With porridge. That's what 'ran away and was never seen again' means in these parts. It means 'eaten.'" Um and what about 'happily ever after'?" asked David, a little uncertainly. "What does that mean?" Eaten quickly," said Brother Number One.