One person looks around and sees a universe created by a god who watches over its long unfurling, marking the fall of sparrows and listening to the prayers of his finest creation. Another person believes that life, in all its baroque complexity, is a chemical aberration that will briefly decorate the surface of a ball of rock spinning somewhere among a billion galaxies. And the two of them could talk for hours and find no great difference between one another, for neither set of beliefs make us kinder or wiser.

Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very bad indeed.

Mother used to say it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.

Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves.

From a good book, I want to be taken to the very edge. I want a glimpse into that outer darkness.

Books are like people. Some look deceptively attractive from a distance, some deceptively unappealing; some are easy company, some demand hard work that isn’t guaranteed to pay off. Some become friends and say friends for life. Some change in our absence - or perhaps it is we who change in theirs - and we meet up again only to find that we don’t get along any more.

Things can be funny when people are uneasy. It softens them up and stops them falling asleep on the sofa. I like those moments where people half-smile and half-wince.