“Hold fast! then you too will see the unchangeable dark distance, out of which nothing can come except one day the chariot; it rolls up, gets bigger and bigger, fills the whole world at the moment it reaches you - and you sink into it like a child sinking into the upholstery of a carriage that drives through the storm and night.”

“They don't have to think. Just be afraid naturally and pulling together. Like specks of mercury rolling into the big piece. Like little specks of mercury rolling into bigger specks and then bigger and then just one piece, and nothing to be scared about or hurt about because you're just a piece of a bigger piece getting bigger rolling across the land into an ocean of mercury...”

“Always set small, realistic goals that you know you can achieve first. But don't give up on the bigger ones that may seem too far from your reach.”

“Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they are a dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books.”

“You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”

“I love books. I like that the moment you open one and sink into it you can escape from the world, into a story that's way more interesting that yours will ever be.”