“No book ever ends, when it’s full of your friends.”

Obscurity is never a virtue.

I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I’ll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else.

The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him.

Careful those who fight with monsters, that they might become monsters themeselves.

f I were a headmaster I would get rid of the history teacher and get a chocolate teacher instead.

I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.

When writing about oneself, one must strive to be truthful. Truth is more important than modesty.

I cannot for the life of me understand why small children take so long to grow up. I think they do it deliberately, just to annoy me.

It is preferable to incur a mild punishment than to perform an onerous task.

Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you.

A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.

I do have a blurred memory of sitting on the stairs and trying over and over again to tie one of my shoelaces, but that is all that comes back to me of school itself.

Human ‘beans’ is the only animals that is killing their own kind.

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly.

I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.

lalalalalalallalalallalalalal have nothing to say.

Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. Just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates him.

When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced.

I prefer all but the very worst travel books, to all but the very best novels.

There comes a point when you can more or less count the number of books you’re going to write before you die.

A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit.

I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they’d once belonged to the sea.

Good books get praised, bad books get praised. Good books get ignored, bad books get ignored.

It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.