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I think that pretty much every form of fiction (I’d include fantasy, obviously) can actually be a real escape from places where you feel bad, and from...more

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Reading is important.Books are important.Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise ...more

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Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie tha...more

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My parents would frisk me before family events. Before weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, and what have you. Because if they didn't, then the book woul...more

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Soon enough his head would be swimming with tales of derring-do and high adventure, tales of beautiful maidens kissed, of evildoers shot with pistols ...more

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Often the adult book is not for you, not yet, or will only be for you when you're ready. But sometimes you will read it anyway, and you will take from...more

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Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit,...more

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The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and yo...more

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The beautiful illusion of fiction is that everything makes sense and that there was a purpose, that there was a point to it all. And that's the best p...more

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Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole wo...more

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I had forgotten what fiction was to me as a boy, forgotten what it was like in the library: fiction was an escape from the intolerable, a doorway into...more

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Rule number one: Don't fuck with librarians.

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Once upon a time,’ is code for ‘I’m lying to you.’ We experience stories as lies and truth at the same time. We learn to empathize with real people vi...more

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I believe we have an obligation to read for pleasure, in private and in public places. If we read for pleasure, if others see us reading, then we lear...more

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Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or...more