Do the children who prefer books set in the real, ordinary, workaday world ever read as obsessively as those who would much rather be transported into other worlds entirely?

The past will find a way to squeeze into the present–if you let it.

People like to complain about the state of contemporary literature, but I can only assume they don't read it very widely.

Fire will burn any human body it touches, and starvation will waste it, but stories are not so predictable in their effects.

Perfect love was that kind of love that made no sense but made everything else make sense somehow. It was raw and unscripted, turbulent and slightly unpredictable.

Adventure,' then, is what might otherwise be called hardship if it were attempted in a different spirit. Turning a difficult task or a perilous journey into an adventure is largely a matter of telling yourself the right story about it, which is one thing that Lewis's child characters have learned from reading, 'the right books.

Writers would be warm, loyal, and otherwise terrific people-if only they'd stop writing.