“Reading is primarily a symptom. Of a healthy imagination, of our interest in this and other worlds, of our ability to be still and quiet, of our ability to dream during daylight.”

“You could say all you liked about reason and logic and common sense and imagination, but when the chips were down the one skill you needed was the ability to think about absolutely nothing whatsoever.”

“He held up his right hand and spread my fingers out in a fan. I held up my left hand and spread my fingers out in a fan and we made our fingers and thumbs touch each other.”

“How pleased we are to have our eyes opened but how easily we close them again.”

“Some people think the Milky Way is a long line of stars, but it isn't. Our galaxy is a huge disk of stars millions of light-years across, and the solar system is somewhere near the outside edge of the disk.”

“What they failed to teach you at school was that the whole business of being human just got messier and more complicated as you got older. You could tell the truth, be polite, take everyone's feelings into consideration and still have to deal with other people's shit. At nine or ninety.”

“I liked maths because it meant solving problems, and these problems were difficult and interesting but there was always a straightforward answer at the end”