Buying a book is not about obtaining a possession, but about securing a portal.

Maybe everything really does just have an expiration date--one that you can't see until she tells you she's leaving, and then she's gone.

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.

The closer and more completely you can come to explaining what a work of art means, the less like art it seems.

If we weigh the significance of a book by the effect it has on its readers, then the great children's books suddenly turn up very high on the list.

Make no mistake, the organizations website counsels. You will be writing a lot of crap. And thats a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. I am not the first person to point out that writing a lot of crap doesnt sound like a particularly fruitful way to spend an entire month, even if it is November.

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