Always remember, with a strong enough will, even the weak can wield great power.

I probably coughed self-pityingly in response, little aware that I was about to cross a tremendous threshold beyond which there would be no return, that in my hands I held an object whose simple appearance belied its profound power. All true readers have a book, a moment, like the one I describe, and when Mum offered me that much-read library copy mine was upon me.

People might think writing is a hard business, but it's nowhere near acting.

A way of looking at you that told you she was listening, that she understood all you were saying, and all you weren't.

His words had tossed the book that was her life into the air and the pages had been blown into disarray, could never be put back together to tell the same story.

She felt like a fictional character who'd escaped the book in which her creator had carefully and kindly trapped her, taken a pair of scissors to her outline and leaped, free.

She's one of the few people able to look beyond the lines on my face to see the twenty-year-old who lives inside.