“The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.”

Black as night, sweet as sin.

Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you’d most like not to lose.

Because,’ she said, ‘when you’re scared but you still do it anyway, that’s brave.

There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.

It’s not hard to own something. Or everything. You just have to know that it’s yours, and then be willing to let it go.

We often confuse what we wish for with what is.

I can believe things that are true and things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not.

I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.

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

Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.

I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.

All your questions can be answered if that is what you want. But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them.

If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained.

Anyone who believes what a cat tells him deserves all he gets.

But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?

I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled.

Last night, I sent you home with a kiss and a promise. I hope you still believe in roses.

What we call real estate – the solid ground to build a house on – is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.

Some stories are so familiar its like going home.

It was only after Pather Panchali had some success at home that I decided to do a second part. But I didn’t want to do the same kind of film again, so I made a musical.

Home is where you feel at home. I’m still looking.

Man is and remains an animal. Here a beast of prey, there a housepet, but always an animal.

Ultimately savings have to go somewhere and I think they will find their home in financial markets and within financial markets, a large part in equity.

The other night I was lying in bed, looking up at the stars, and I wondered, ‘Where the hell is my roof?