If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.

We lusty bibliophiles know that reading, unlike just about anything else, is both good for you and loads of fun.

What's a horizon?' Lazlo asked, straight-faced. 'Is it like the end of an aisle of books?

My daughter is seven, and some of the other second-grade parents complain that their children don't read for pleasure. When I visit their homes, the children's rooms are crammed with expensive books, but the parent's rooms are empty. Those children do not see their parents reading, as I did every day of my childhood. By contrast, when I walk into an apartment with books on the shelves, books on the bedside tables, books on the floor, and books on the toilet tank, then I know what I would see if I opened the door that says 'PRIVATE--GROWNUPS KEEP OUT': a child sprawled on the bed, reading.

Books wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and on our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in it themselves.

We live for books.