“I read a lot...I love books. I work with books. Books are my life.”

“Reading is one of life's great pleasures; talking about books keeps their worlds alive for longer.”

“Quite simply the book and I were meant to be together.”

“Life is too short to read books whose cleverness makes them impenetrable. A good book should keep you awake at night, flickering through pages as you promise yourself just one more chapter; they shouldn't put you to sleep as you tackle a paragraph for the fifth time.”

“I probably coughed self-pityingly in response, little aware that I was about to cross a tremendous threshold beyond which there would be no return, that in my hands I held an object whose simple appearance belied its profound power. All true readers have a book, a moment, like the one I describe, and when Mum offered me that much-read library copy mine was upon me.”

“All true readers have a book, a moment when real life is never going to be able to compete with fiction again.”

“She doesn't know I cry for the changing times. That just as I reread favourite books, some small part of me hoping for a different ending, I find myself hoping against hope that the war will never come. That this time, somehow, it will leave us be.”