“If you keep pretending you're in that book, it will make you not want to live in the life you're in.”

“A story wearing another dress every time you hear it - what could be better? A story that grows and puts out flowers like a living thing! But look at the stories people press in books! They may last longer, yes, but they breathe only when someone opens the book. They are sound pressed between the pages, and only a voice can bring them back to life! Then they throw off sparks, Balbulus! Then they go free as birds flying out into the world. Perhaps you're right, and the paper makes them immortal. But why should I care? Will I live on, neatly pressed between the pages with my words? Nonsense! We're none of us immortal; even the finest words don't change that, do they?”

“I pledge to set out to live a thousand lives between printed pages.I pledge to use books as doors to other minds, old and young, girl and boy, man and animal.I pledge to use books to open windows to a thousand different worlds and to the thousand different faces of my own world.I pledge to use books to make my universe spread much wider than the world I live in every day.I pledge to treat my books like friends, visiting them all from time to time and keeping them close.”

“Go back and rid the word of that book. Fill it with words before spring comes, or winter will never end for you. And I will take not only your life for the Adderhead's but your daughter's, too, because she helped you bind the book. Do you undersand, Bluejay"Why two?" asked Mo hoarsely. "How can you ask for two lives in return for one?”

“Sometimes, when you're so sad you don't know what to do, it helps to be angry.”

“So it's happened, I kept thinking, you're in the middle of a story exactly as you've always wanted, and it's horrible. Fear tastes quite different when you're not just reading about it, Meggie, and playing hero wasn't half as much fun as I'd expected.”

“You are crazy!" whispered Meggie. "You're a total lunatic!"But her opinion did not impress Fenoglio in the slightest. "So what? All writers are lunatics!”