Are Book In Quotes

So many books, so little time.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.

If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

′Classic′ - a book which people praise and don't read.

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

Books are a uniquely portable magic.

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.

Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.

Be careful about reading health books. Some fine day you'll die of a misprint.

A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.

The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.

Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.

When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books.

Life is a book and there are a thousand pages I have not yet read.

When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.

Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.

Here’s to books, the cheapest vacation you can buy.

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.

Think before you speak. Read before you think.

Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.

Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

I cannot live without books.

I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.

He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books.

When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Books may well be the only true magic.

Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.

That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it; Who has left the world better than he found it, Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; Whose life was an inspiration; Whose memory a benediction.

Books are like mirrors: if a fool looks in, you cannot expect a genius to look out.

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.

Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.

It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.

There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

It kills me sometimes, how people die.

I am haunted by humans.

What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.

If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!

We live for books.

but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.

Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.

That’s part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence

I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.

Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.

Books. Cats. Life is Good.

It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them.

Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.

A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

Stories never really end...even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They don't end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page.

I don't believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book.

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.

Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.

Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.

Even death has a heart.

There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.

I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.

Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.

The world was hers for the reading.

It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.

If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success?

Reader's Bill of Rights 1. The right to not read 2. The right to skip pages 3. The right to not finish 4. The right to reread 5. The right to read anything 6. The right to escapism 7. The right to read anywhere 8. The right to browse 9. The right to read out loud 10. The right to not defend your tastes

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.

She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.

Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree?

Books are easily destroyed. But words will live as long as people can remember them.

All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk.

A DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children

One can never have enough socks," said Dumbledore. "Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.

A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like betrayal

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.

Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.

Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand.

From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.

My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.

A good book is an event in my life.

Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.

My library is an archive of longings.

Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives--or to find strength in a very long one.

Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men.

The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.

Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness.

A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.

A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.

Books are the carriers of civilization...They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...

If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.

The helpful thought for which you look Is written somewhere in a book.

I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.

A house without books is like a room without windows.

Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gate And though I oft have passed them by A day will come at last when I Shall take the hidden paths that run West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.

Sometimes, when I have to do something I don't want to do, I pretend I'm a character from a book. It's easier to know what they would do.

The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

It's not gray," Clary felt compelled to point out. "It's green." "If there was such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood," said Jace.

Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you've finished just to stay near it.

When I was your age, television was called books.

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books

When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.

If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.

You want to know about anybody? See what books they read, and how they've been read...

All human wisdom is contained in these two words - Wait and Hope

Books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them.

No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.

Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.

I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.

In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?

We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.

I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so made companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own insignificant self; but my books were always my friends, let fail all else.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.

The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.

May I see you again?" he asked. There was an endearing nervousness in his voice. I smiled. "Sure." "Tomorrow?" he asked. "Patience, grasshopper," I counseled. "You don't want to seem overeager. "Right, that's why I said tomorrow," he said. "I want to see you again tonight. But I'm willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow." I rolled my eyes. "I'm serious," he said. "You don't even know me," I said. I grabbed the book from the center console. "How about I call you when I finish this?" "But you don't even have my phone number," he said. "I strongly suspect you wrote it in this book." He broke out into that goofy smile. "And you say we don't know each other.

You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.

I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.

And all the books you've read have been read by other people. And all the songs you've loved have been heard by other people. And that girl that's pretty to you is pretty to other people. and that if you looked at these facts when you were happy, you would feel great because you are describing 'unity.

Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said..."As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar.

Have you really read all those books in your room?” Alaska laughing- “Oh God no. I’ve maybe read a third of ‘em. But I’m going to read them all. I call it my Life’s Library. Every summer since I was little, I’ve gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read.

People come, people go – they’ll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in a favorite book. When you finally close the cover, the characters have told their story and you start up again with another book, complete with new characters and adventures. Then you find yourself focusing on the new ones, not the ones from the past.

I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.

In a way, it's nice to know that there are Greek gods out there, because you have somebody to blame when things go wrong. For instance, when you're walking away from a bus that's just been attacked by monster hags and blown up by lightning, and it's raining on top of everything else, most people might think that's just really bad luck; when you're a half-blood, you understand that some devine force is really trying to mess up your day.

THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. We are here to help you. 2. You will have time to get to your class before the bell rings. 3. The dress code will be enforced. 4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds. 5. Our football team will win the championship this year. 6. We expect more of you here. 7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen. 8. Your schedule was created with you in mind. 9. Your locker combination is private. 10. These will be the years you look back on fondly. TEN MORE LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. You will use algebra in your adult lives. 2. Driving to school is a privilege that can be taken away. 3. Students must stay on campus during lunch. 4. The new text books will arrive any day now. 5. Colleges care more about you than your SAT scores. 6. We are enforcing the dress code. 7. We will figure out how to turn off the heat soon. 8. Our bus drivers are highly trained professionals. 9. There is nothing wrong with summer school. 10. We want to hear what you have to say.

I will remember the kisses our lips raw with love and how you gave me everything you had and how I offered you what was left of me, and I will remember your small room the feel of you the light in the window your records your books our morning coffee our noons our nights our bodies spilled together sleeping the tiny flowing currents immediate and forever your leg my leg your arm my arm your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again.

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.

I love books, by the way, way more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself. Movies show you the pink house. A good book tells you there's a pink house and lets you paint some of the finishing touches, maybe choose the roof style,park your own car out front. My imagination has always topped anything a movie could come up with. Case in point, those darned Harry Potter movies. That was so not what that part-Veela-chick, Fleur Delacour, looked like.

She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Leisel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchist's suit collection. She kissed him long and soft, and when she pulled herself away, she touched his mouth with her fingers...She did not say goodbye. She was incapable, and after a few more minutes at his side, she was able to tear herself from the ground. It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on...

[D]on't ever apologise to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologise to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read...

You should date a girl who reads. Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn. She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. Buy her another cup of coffee. Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice. It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. She has to give it a shot somehow. Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world. Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series. If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype. You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots. Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads. Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.

This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake. Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true? We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La. They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.

Tess, Tess, Tessa. Was there ever a more beautiful sound than your name? To speak it aloud makes my heart ring like a bell. Strange to imagine that, isn’t it – a heart ringing – but when you touch me that is what it is like: as if my heart is ringing in my chest and the sound shivers down my veins and splinters my bones with joy. Why have I written these words in this book? Because of you. You taught me to love this book where I had scorned it. When I read it for the second time, with an open mind and heart, I felt the most complete despair and envy of Sydney Carton. Yes, Sydney, for even if he had no hope that the woman he loved would love him, at least he could tell her of his love. At least he could do something to prove his passion, even if that thing was to die. I would have chosen death for a chance to tell you the truth, Tessa, if I could have been assured that death would be my own. And that is why I envied Sydney, for he was free. And now at last I am free, and I can finally tell you, without fear of danger to you, all that I feel in my heart. You are not the last dream of my soul. You are the first dream, the only dream I ever was unable to stop myself from dreaming. You are the first dream of my soul, and from that dream I hope will come all other dreams, a lifetime’s worth. With hope at least, Will Herondale

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door — Only this, and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore — For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore — Nameless here for evermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door — Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; — This it is, and nothing more." Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there, and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" — Merely this, and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice: Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore — Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; — 'Tis the wind and nothing more." Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore; Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door — Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door — Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore. Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore — Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning— little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door — Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as "Nevermore.