“If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, "an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.”

“Words,words filled the night like the fragrance of invisible flowers.”

“She felt as if the grave stones were whispering those names to her as she walked past... Those stones that bore no names seemed like closed mouths, sad mouths that forgotten how to speak. But perhaps the dead didn't mind what their names had once been?”

“I will try to write books until I drop dead.”

“Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?”

“If I was a book, I would like to be a library book, so I would be taken home by all different sorts of kids.”

“I'm perfectly happy to know the world at secondhand. It's a lot safer.”

“Children, they're the same everywhere. Greedy little creatures but the best listeners in the world -any world. The very best of all.”

“Courage was something John Reckless only ever wished he had. Courage was not a given; it was acquired, earned. You had to take the difficult paths, and John had always picked the easy ones.”

“Read – and be curious. And if somebody says to you: 'Things are this way. You can't change it' - don't believe a word.”

“Killing is easy," said Mo, "Dying is harder...”