“An unread book does nobody any good. Stories happen in the mind of a reader, not among symbols printed on a page.”

“Stories never really end… even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They don't end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page.”

“The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.”

“The space between the young readers eyeballs and the printed page is a holy place and officialdom should trample all over it at their peril.”

“The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at theduring the first eight pages.”

“Books are like flypaper, memories cling to the printed pages better than anything else.”

“Bad people succeed and good people fail, but that's not the end of the story. Miracles happen that nobody sees, and among us walk heroes who are never recognized, and people live in loneliness because they cannot believe they are loved.”

“I’d much rather pretend I’m
somewhere else, and any time I open
the pages of a book, that happens.”

“Reading activates and exercises the mind.
Reading forces the mind to discriminate. From the beginning, readers have to recognize letters printed on the page, make them into words, the words into sentences, and the sentences into concepts.
Reading pushes us to use our imagination and makes us more creatively inclined.”

“Oh, but of course the story of Adam and Eve was only ever symbolic, wasn't it? Symbolic?! So Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin by a non-existent individual? Nobody not brought up in the faith could reach any verdict other than "barking mad."”