Penelope Lively

Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.

It seems to me that anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd.

When you are able to be with a person and there is no need to talk, something has happened.

Giving presents is one of the most possessive things we do, did you realize that? It's the way we keep a hold on other people. Plant ourselves in their lives.

The power of language. Preserving the ephemeral; giving form to dreams, permanence to sparks of sunlight.

I have no idea where I am going, she thought, but I have begun.

If we had not met, that day, I think I would have imagined you somehow.

Forever, reading has been central, the necessary fix, the support system. Her life has been informed by reading. She has read not just for distraction, sustenance, to pass the time, but she has read in a state of primal innocence, reading for enlightenment, for instruction, even. ... She is as much a product of what she has read as of the way in which she has lived; she is like millions of others built by books, for whom books are an essential foodstuff, who could starve without.