If you're a kid who is always on the outside hoping to be on the inside, you're watching a lot. You're trying to figure out how to become a normal person in a society that considers you weird.

Nothing smelled so good or danced so well as a birch fire.

I woke up one morning and realized that what I wanted to say to everyone - children, young people, adults - was: Read for your life.

One thing living in Japan did for me was to make me feel that what is left out of a work of art is as important as, if not more important than, what is put in.

You gotta know someone cares about you, or you just give up.

Impressed. Lord. He had nearly drowned.

Read for fun, read for information, read in order to understand yourself and other people with quite different ideas. Learn about the world beyond your door. Learn to be compassionate and grow in wisdom. Books can help us in all these ways.