“Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book."

(Acceptance speech,, November 17, 2010)”

“Remember, once more
how our world should be.
And please, don't forget,
please, please don't forget.”

“I want to warn against being seduced by technology. I don't think that the really interesting materials to use are those miracle plastics and miracle alloys or fiber composites or anything like that. The real miracle materials are the ones which have been abandoned by modern technology. Beautiful land and things like that. I am utterly disenchanted with technology, because the super uses of technology are the ones being used in Vietnam and that, to me, is not beautiful... I don't say no to the new technology, I don't say no to lasers, I don't say no to advanced plastics. The trouble is, people over and over again use new materials, new materials for old purposes. I'm not interested in that. I think by using old materials you've got to find new purposes. In a way, what is abandoned is more of a challenge than what has just been discovered.”

“She was too tired to feel anything more, she wanted a book to do to her what books did: take away the world, slide it aside for a little bit, and let her please, please just be somewhere and somebody else”

“Please," she whispered as she opened the book, "please get me out of here just for an hour or so, please take me far, far away”

“If we displease God, does it matter whom we please? If we please Him does it matter whom we displease?”

“Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know why one is pleased. Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.”

“I don't know myself, what to do, where to go… I lie in the crack of a book for my comfort… it's what the world offers… please leave me alone to dream as I fancy.”

“Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.”

“Books cannot always please, however good;
Minds are not ever craving for their food.”