Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

"When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic, yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled."

"A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth."

"A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth."

"Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic. As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head."

"There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere."

"There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic."

"What better place to kill time than a library?"

"I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions."

"All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story."

"Of course I loved books more than people."