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I still love the book-ness of books, the smell of books: I am a book fetishist—books to me are the coolest and sexiest and most wonderful things there...more

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...Because a book is a little empathy machine. It puts you inside somebody else’s head. You see out of the world through somebody else’s eyes. It’s ve...more

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I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children . . . do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wro...more

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There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.

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Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You'll find what you need to find. Just read.

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If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies — Tolkien didn’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he re...more

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I wanted books and made no distinction between good books or bad, only between the ones I loved, the ones that spoke to my soul, and the ones I merely...more

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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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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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At home, my father ate all the most burnt pieces of toast. 'Yum!' he'd say, and 'Charcoal! Good for you!' and 'Burnt toast! My favorite!' and he'd eat...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