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

There are not so many mythical creatures from Inkheart.

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

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.

Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn't break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out very slowly.

To say I had some pent-up anger would be like saying Britney Spears had minor impulse-control issues.

Healing doesn't mean the damage never existed. It means it no longer controls our lives

So, Sheriff, " she said. "How do you feel about a life of crime?

No worldly pursuit compares to the joy of experiencing the change of one soul from death to life.

Kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.

I think poetry is a fabulous medium to encapsulate thoughts far more precisely than prose.

Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength - in search of my mother's garden, I found my own.

There's so many songs about heartbreak that exist this in the world, because music is somehow the perfect medium to express something like this.

Retire to what? I'm a golfer and a fisherman. I've got no place to retire to.

I think a newspaper should be provocative, stir 'em up, but you can't do that on television. It's just not on.