Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?

There are not so many mythical creatures from Inkheart.

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

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

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.

Maybe all you need to do is find the heartbeat in everything. And if writing is living, the discovery of the beat of a heart, then when you read me, you are living by my side.

Instead of dwelling on that pain within, reach out to someone else's pain.

Every answer I seek lies within me. Any outward seeking for my answers can only take me as far as my inner self permits.

Give people the chance to change their heart.

Instead of the word 'love' there was an enormous heart, a symbol sometimes used by people who have trouble figuring out the difference between words and shapes.

It was worse than a crime

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.

If I hear a record once, I usually never listen to it again. I rarely listen to music - unless it's Billie Holiday.

Man should make himself a lot of good karma.

The worst isn't done. The worst is just beginning, and there are no happy endings. (Samuel Tarly)