Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn’t break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out very slowly.

He saw so many emotions mingled on her face: anger disappointment, fear – and defiance. Like her daughter, thought Fenoglio again. So uncompromising, so strong. Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so...

The only way ghosts can hurt you is through your own fear

What are stories for if we don’t learn from them?

If you keep pretending you’re in that book, it will make you not want to live in the life you’re in.

Secrets…. nothing eats away at love faster.

And there stood Basta with his foot already on another dead body, smiling. Why not? He had hit his target, and it was the target he had been aiming for all along: Dustfinger’s heart, his...

This book taught me, once and for all, how easily you can escape this world with the help of words! You can find friends between the pages of a book, wonderful friends.

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,...

Down there the nights are bright and nobody believes in the Devil.

Io non credo fondamentalmente a nessuno, ormai dovresti saperlo. Siamo tutti bugiardi quando serve.

What was she hoping to gain from his death? That it would numb the pain of his betrayal, or heal her injured pride? Her red sister didn’t know much about love.

Elinor had read countless stories in which the main characters fell sick at some point because they were so unhappy. She had always thought that a very romantic idea, but she’d dismissed it as a...

When the heart craved something so forcefully, then reason became nothing but helpless observer.

The world was a terrible place, cruel, pitiless, dark as a bad dream. Not a good place to live. Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness – and love. Books loved anyone who...

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

Sai bene quanto il fuoco sia facile a offendersi.

You forgot something important!-What?-It’s under my sweater!-WHAT?!-Me!

Killing is easy,” said Mo, “Dying is harder…

She wanted to return to her dream. Perhaps it was still somewhere there behind her closed eyelids. Perhaps a little of its happiness still clung like gold dust to her lashes. Don’t dreams in fairy...

Weren’t all books ultimately related? After all, the same letters filled them, just arranged in a different order. Which meant that, in a certain way, every book was contained in every other!

So it’s happened, I kept thinking, you’re in the middle of a story exactly as you’ve always wanted, and it’s horrible. Fear tastes quite different when you’re not just reading about it, Meggie, and playing...

La paura ha tutto un altro sapore quando la si vive dal vero, Meggie, e giocare all’eroe non era così divertente come mi ero immaginato.

Da dove devo cominciare? Intanto, va chiarita subito una cosa fondamentale: un romanziere non scrive mai tutto quello che sa sui suoi personaggi. I lettori non devono venire a sapere tutto. Alcuni aspetti è meglio...

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?

The night belongs to beasts of prey, and always has. It’s easy to forget that when you’re indoors, protected by light and solid walls.

She read and read and read, but she was stuffing herself with the letters on the page like an unhappy child stuffing itself with chocolate. They didn’t taste bad, but she was still unhappy.

Unlike me, he realized that Dustfinger would do anything in return for such a promise. All he wants is to go back to his own world. He doesn’t even stop to ask if his story...

Il punto è che credi troppo volentieri a ciò che vuoi credere.

Voglio dire che io fiuto le belle storie a chilometri di distanza. Quindi non tenti di nascondermene una. Sputi fuori, forza, e in cambio si guadagna una fetta di questo fantastico dolce con i buchi...

You know, it’s a funny thing about writers. Most people don’t stop to think of books being written by people much like themselves. They think that writers are all dead long ago–they don’t expect to...

All writers are insane!

Look at your daughter,’ she whispered. ‘As brave as…as..” She wanted to compare Meggie to a hero in some story but all the heroes she could think of were men, and anyway none of them...

Night was fading over the fields as if the rain had washed the darkness out of the hem of its garment.

Faccio volentieri delle promesse, specialmente quelle che non posso mantenere.

The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure.

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

That bloody bastard! That thrice accursed son of a bitch!

Meggie thought this first whisper sounded a little different from one book to another, depending on weather or not she already knew the story it was going to tell her.

I will try to write books until I drop dead.

Dustfinger still clearly remembered the feeling of being in love for the first time. How vulnerable his heart had suddenly been! Such a trembling, quivering thing, happy and miserably unhappy at once.

Can’t you imagine? Haven’t you told her about the place enough?” He tried the handle again, as if that could change anything. Meggie had covered the whole door with quotations. They looked to him now...

For him that stealeth,or borroweth and returneth not,this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted....

As Mo had said: writing stories is a kind of magic, too.

When it came to hiding, even Gwin had nothing to teach Dustfinger. A strange sense of curiosity had always driven him to explore the hidden, forgotten corners of this and any other place, and all...

Stories always go on. They don’t end on the last page any more than they begin on the first page

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

So what? All writers are lunatics!

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

It was a chilly morning after the night’s rain, and the sun hung in the sky like a pale coin lost by someone high up in the clouds.