Desperation will drive you to do things you know will never make you whole again and even to lose the very thing you’re desperate for.

— Laura Miller

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?

— Laura Miller

Dreams would always end with you, and then mornings would steal you away with a cruelty that haunted my days.

— Laura Miller

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

— Laura Miller

How does the story really go? Does she ever cross your mind? Does she ever steal your nights? Is she still a part of you? Do you ever wish she were still by your side? And what would you do? If she walked up here tomorrow And told you that she loved you? Would you drop it all and run to her? Would you tell her you love her too? Or would you simply send her home? And tell her you’ve moved on? Tell me, Buddy, what would you do?

— Laura Miller

I can hazily remember, long ago, having adults — librarians, friends’ parents — suggest to me that I liked books “with magic” because I wanted to escape from a reality that, by implication, I lacked the gumption to face.

— Laura Miller

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.

— Laura Miller

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.

— Laura Miller

If you've ever read one of those articles that asks notable people to list their favorite books, you may have been impressed or daunted to see them pick Proust or Thomas Mann or James Joyce. You might even feel sheepish about the fact that you reread Pride and Prejudice or The Lord of the Rings, or The Catcher in the Rye or Gone With the Wind every couple of years with some much pleasure. Perhaps, like me, you're even a little suspicious of their claims, because we all know that the books we've loved best are seldom the ones we esteem the most highly - or the ones we'd be most like other people to think we read over and over again.

— Laura Miller

I gave him a piece of my heart a long time ago, and once you give that away, I’ve learned you don’t so easily get it back.

— Laura Miller