“There is something about that moment, when literature becomes accessible, and a door of the world opens. ”

“And I could test myself - my own courage - with it, too, because when the doors at either end of the secret staircase were closed, it was impenetrably dark. I hid in the staircase, shivering with terror, telling the narrative: The little girl was in a dark, dark place but she was very brave...Sometimes the door at the bottom opened, and a wedge of light sliced up the stairs; a maid, her arms filled with folded laundry, would find me and ask in amazement what I was doing there.And though I answered lightheartedly that I was playing, the truth is that I was not entirely certain what I was doing there, crouched and frightened in the darkness. Only now, sixty years later, do I see that I was arming myself, rehearsing panic, loss, and helplessness; assessing my own cowardice and courage, and and the same time reassuring myself that the door would always open, that the light would always find its way in.”

“There was just a moment when things weren't quite the same, weren't quite as they had always been through the long friendship”

“-a whole world can lie before someone, if love is there when one wakes.”

“It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere.”

“I don't know what you mean when you say 'the whole world' or 'generations before him.'I thought there was only us. I thought there was only now.”

“I knew that there had been times in the past-terrible times-when people had destroyed others in haste,in fear, and had brought about their own destruction”