“Let's run away to Venice, and hide out in an old movie theater. We can dye our hair blonde, so no one will ever find us!”

“We all know what fun it can be to get right into a book and live there for a while, but falling out of a story and suddenly finding yourself in this world doesn't seem to be much fun at all.”

“Sometimes, when I went to the spring to wash early in the morning," he murmured, "there'd be tiny fairies flitting around above the water, not much bigger than the butterflies you have here, and blue as violet petals. They liked to fly into my hair. Sometimes they spat in my face. They weren't very friendly, but they shone like glowworms by night. I sometimes caught one and put it in a jar. If I let it out at night before going to sleep I had wonderful dreams.""Capricorn said there were trolls and giants, too," said Meggie quietly.Dustfinger gave her a thoughtful look. "Yes, there were," he said. "But Capricorn wasn't particularly fond of them. He'd have liked to do away with them all. He had them hunted. He hunted anything that could run.""It must be a dangerous world." Meggie was trying to imagine it all: the giants, the trolls, and the fairies. Mo had once given her a book about fairies.Dustfinger shrugged. "Yes, it's dangerous, so what? This world's dangerous, too, isn't it?”

“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”

“When you open a book it's like going to the theater first you see the curtain then it is pulled aside and the show begins.”

“Why would we ever want to go back when your world is so accommodating with your telephones and your guns and what's that sticky stuff called ...duct tape.”

“A mirror hung between the shelves.Clara stepped in front of it and let her fingers run over the silver roses that covered the frame. She had never seen anything so beautiful. The glass they surrounded was dark, as if the night had spilled onto it. It was misted up, and right where she saw the reflection of her face was the imprint of a hand.”