My ideal reader is me. And yes, my ideal reader comes with me and is forgiving.

I realized the other day that about the only author I genuinely read for pure pleasure is one of the worst authors in the world, a guy called Harry Stephen Keeler, a long dead American mystery writer. He was probably the greatest bad writer America ever produced.

You know you can set fire to the capacity to say.

Books smell and feel better. They have that wonderful thingness of turning the pages.

We owe it to each other to tell stories.

Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.

How big are souls anyway?" asked Coraline. The other mother sat down at the kitchen table and leaned against the back wall, saying nothing. She picked at her teeth with a long crimson-varnished fingernail, then she tapped the finger, gently, tap-tap-tap against the polished black surface of her black button eyes.