A thousand enemies outside the house are better than one within. Arab proverb

There are not so many mythical creatures from Inkheart.

The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure.

believe me. Sometimes when life looks to be at its grimmest, there's a light hidden at the heart of things. Clive Barker, Abarat

Second, there are so many magical places in books that you cant go to, like Hogwarts and Middle Earth, so I wanted to set a story in a place where children can actually go.

A library book, I imagine, is a happy book.

You know what they say: When people start burning books they'll soon burn human beings.

Books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them.

I have two Iceland horses, a very hairy dog called Looney, and a guinea pig.

Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?

If I was a book, I would like to be a library book, so I would be taken home by all different sorts of kids.

Recognize that throughout this beautiful day, you have an incredible amount of opportunities to move your life into the direction you want it to go.

Greatness always indicates simplicity. Wisdom always results from curiosity.

Seeds do not grow without soil

I wanted to protect my professorial dignity and not lay myself open to laughter from the Americans, who when they do laugh, laugh raucously

I don't mind being slightly fat-ish, I just don't want to be fat.

The straight line is godless and immoral. The straight line is not a creative line, it is a duplicating line, an imitating line.

Stop crying; stand up and look around you; there is always a way out in life!

Irish women are always carrying water on their heads, and always carrying their husbands home from pubs. Such things are the greatest posture-builders in the world.

Somebody came up to me after a talk I had given, and say, "You make mathematics seem like fun." I was inspired to reply, "If it isn't fun, why do it?"

A cosmic war is like a ritual drama in which participants act out on Earth a battle they believe is actually taking place in the heavens.