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Books don't only furnish a room: they also make the best holiday gifts.

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

My bedroom was filled with reading material: books salvaged from dustbins, books borrowed from friends, books with missing pages, books found in the street, abandoned, unreadable, torn, scribbled on, unloved, unwanted and dismissed. My bedroom was the Battersea Dogs' Home of books.

Books are finished.

One of the maddening ironies of writing books is that it leaves so little time for reading others'. My bedside is piled with books, but it's duty reading: books for book research, books for review. The ones I pine for are off on a shelf downstairs.

Our house has a library - it seemed better use of the space than as a dining room! - and I try to spend as much time in there as possible. There's nothing better while reading or writing than to be surrounded by books.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

Books come from within.

The bedroom in my apartment is far too small to hold a nightstand. There is, however, this bookshelf. Yes, I stow whatever I'm reading on the lower shelf, but more importantly, it's where I keep a collection of ghost books.

My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.