Laura Miller Book Quotations

Buying a book is not about obtaining a possession, but about securing a portal.

The first book we fall in love with shapes us every bit as much as the first person we fall in love with...

Adventure,' then, is what might otherwise be called hardship if it were attempted in a different spirit. Turning a difficult task or a perilous journey into an adventure is largely a matter of telling yourself the right story about it, which is one thing that Lewis's child characters have learned from reading, 'the right books.

If we weigh the significance of a book by the effect it has on its readers, then the great children's books suddenly turn up very high on the list.

The relationship between book and reader is intimate, at best a kind of love affair, and first loves are famously tenacious. [...] First love is a momentous step in our emotional education, and in many ways, it shapes us forever.

Do the children who prefer books set in the real, ordinary, workaday world ever read as obsessively as those who would much rather be transported into other worlds entirely?