I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy

I don't pretend reality is the same for everyone.

Once upon a time there was a fairy godmother, but the rest of the time there was none. This story is about one of those other times.

For me to see is to read. It has always been that way.

Of course I loved books more than people.

Boys do not leave their boyhood behind when they leave off their school uniform.

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.

But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grown pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.

When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic, yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.

A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.

There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere.

Go back to bed, Cowan. I want no promises from you.

And thou shalt in thy daughter see, This picture, once, resembled thee.

Not merely one of the finest fantasy novels of recent years, but one of the finest ever. Should not be missed

Twere better far That gods should quaff their nectar merrily, And men sing out the day like grasshoppers, So may they haply lull the watchful thunder.

Sleep was the greatest invention in the history of mankind. When I was sleeping, I wasn’t feeling guilty, or miserable, or sad.

We do an epically bad job of acknowledging one another's work and checking our sources.

What the hand does the mind remembers.

The rich are never threatened by the poor - they do not notice them.

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.

I'm not a policy maker. I'm not even a very great activist. My main thing is to make things that speak for the culture that I live in.