“Books are like magic carpets, taking us to places real and imaginary that we never thought possible.”

“The best vacation is still a book, a renewable ticket to places real and imaginary.”

“The poet Marianne Moore famously wrote of 'real toads in imaginary gardens,' and the labyrinth offers us the possibility of being real creatures in symbolic space...In such spaces as the labyrinth we cross over [between real and imaginary spaces]; we are really travelling, even if the destination is only symbolic.”

“A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.”

“Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.”

“... because real thoughts come from outside and travel with us like the noodle soup we take to work; in other words, inquisitors burn books in vain. If a book has anything to say, it burns with a quiet laugh, because any book worth its salt points up and out of itself.”