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.

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.

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.

To me, when something is classic, whether it came out today or thirty years ago, it falls all in the same pot.

When I'm in a bad mood, I don't listen.

Gods' payment is the best payment.

I'm single again and I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm loving it at the moment. This is what I've been missing.

I understand Spanish better than I speak it.

Only by living absurdly is it possible to break out of this infinite absurdity.

Unless the gentle inherit the earth, / There will be no earth.

Little is really known of the actual potentials of human functioning.

The great thing about bushcraft is that wherever you go, the skills go with you.

"Love Walks In," it was the same thing. That song is about aliens, by the way.