Quotes from Laura Miller

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

Of all the butterflies that chose to stay, I'm in love with the one that got away.

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.

She tries to wear her pain on the inside. She always has. It's the trademark of the oldest sibling, I think.

I believe that there is a perfect someone for everyone, and I know that you still believe that too. There is a perfect someone, even if the road to that someone isn't all that perfect," he added.

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.

Fire will burn any human body it touches, and starvation will waste it, but stories are not so predictable in their effects.

Desire acts as a honey trap to the unwary male, luring him into unworthy and catastrophic enterprises. The beauty of the Narnian witches isn't ancillary to their evil, but integral to it, one of the weapons in their arsenal. Evil must, after all, appear attractive if it's going to be tempting, and from there it's only a small step further to the conclusion that feminine beauty is inherently wicked.

The closer and more completely you can come to explaining what a work of art means, the less like art it seems.

This is one of the chief differences between a child's experience of a favorite book and an educated adult's. For the adult, a book may be a work of art, possibly a very great one, but for the child reader, certain books are universes. If we are lucky, we retain some of that capacity to be immersed in a story.

What literature could accomplish by way of moral education was less instruction than an expansion of our capacity for empathy: "it admits us to experiences other than our own.

because we all know that the books we've loved best are seldom the ones we esteem the most highly

We have but one dance to a lifetime of songs.

And you wanna know how i know i love you? He asks. I know because when I see you, I smile. I know because when I'm not with you, you're all I can think about. I know because when I hear good news, you're the first person I want to tell. And I know because when I hear bad news, you're the first person I want to talk to.

remember when life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.

When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.

When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile. Laura Miller - Butterfly Weeds

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

And I didn't even try to fight the smile returning to my face, as I realized in that moment that I would eat a million pepperoni pizzas for that girl. And she knew. Damn it.

there's a difference between wanting all stories you read to be about you in the most literal sense, and reading with the hope that you can find a bit of yourself in all stories, however alien they may seem on the surface. When our capacity to identify withers, so does a portion of our humanity.

I can see how James or Greene might agree with this point of view: the former finds that the ugly old lamp no longer produces a genie when rubbed and the latter realizes he has nothing left to wish for.

Hope is a funny thing when you think about it. It's something you always have. You just have to believe you do.

There is an uncharacteristic radicalism to Lewis's further suggestion that if we can find "even one reader to whom the cheap little book with its double columns and the lurid daub on its cover had been a lifelong delight, who had read and reread it, who would notice, and object, if a single word were changed, then, however little we could see in it ourselves and however it was despised by our friends and colleagues, we should not dare to put it beyond the pale.

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