“Stories are life," protested Pico. "Without them, books would be only paper and ink, with them they breathe, the reader is drawn in, the stories become him.”

“Beyond the stars you see are other stars, stars beyond stars,' she told him, 'and all are dreams, like shoals of fish in the oceans of the night.”

“We never look at the grass, though it is ubiquitous. If it's left alone to shake its hair loose it will produce tiny tassels and flowers, miniature and beautiful, that I'd never noticed before. Bea...”

“...his favorite books, those he'd read over and over so he knew just the lurch his heart would make when he turned the page and encountered the illustration of the despondent dragon under a half-mo...”

“He went to sleep as soon as they'd gone, waking in the middle of the night and walking outside into a sky whose stars hung so low he felt he strolled among them and he could see indeed, so clear th...”

“Sometimes, insatiable curiosity and compassion are all that life requires of us.”

“Curiosity is the one thing invincible in Nature.”

“If spectacle is lacking in everyday life, it may be because we have forgotten where and how to look.”

“How can I tell anyone that there has always lived within me a rusty sense of disgust-a dull, brackish water that I suspect is my soul?”

“I'll tell you a secret.Old storytellers never die.They disappear into their own story.”

“A secret note is secret. There is no reason to sign it.”