Anna James > Quotes

“Books can change minds and change worlds, open doors and open minds, and plant seeds that can grow into magical or even terrifying things. Stories are things to be loved and respected at the same time; never underestimate the power of them.”
― Anna James, The Bookwanderers

“Friends should bring out the best in you, not be the same as you. I’m sure you’re someone’s perfect fit.”
― Anna James, The Bookwanderers

“The books we love when we’re growing up shape us in a special way, Tilly. The characters in the books we read help us decide who we want to be.”
― Anna James, The Bookwanderers

“Are the things in your imagination less real than the things in front of you? Is this rose more real than you? Do the books you've read mean less to you because they haven't really happened to you? Do daydreams at midday or nightdreams at midnight mean nothing?”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Bookwanderers

“No one is too old for a story before bed,”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales

“Tilly sometimes felt like there had been a lesson where friendship had been explained, but she’d been out sick and had never quite been able to catch up.”
― Anna James, The Bookwanderers

“. . . because the writer is saying that our dreams and our stories matter. I think it's quite beautiful that you can read the whole book as Alice telling her sister a story. And then Alice's sister is thinking about passing on the story to their future children, because stories last much longer than we do. Our stories are how we will be remembered - so we've got to make sure they are worth telling.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Bookwanderers

“There are no rules for reading, after all.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales

“Christmas at the bookshop is the best.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales

“Often characters in books are considerably more consistent than the people around us. All that messy life stuff does rather get in the way.”
― Anna James, The Bookwanderers

“bookshop is like a map of the world.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Bookwanderers

“But we're all anomalies in one way or another - it's what makes being alive beautiful. We're more than neat plot devices; we're contradictory and confusing, and it's wonderful. There's nothing wrong with a few contradictions, and I think you might have to embrace them, as it would already seem that there are going to be some unpredictable side effects caused by your dad being fictional.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Bookwanderers

“Magic”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales

“Find your own path! Don’t just blindly follow the one laid out in front of you.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales

“But there was a magic in helping people find the perfect book for someone they loved, and the Christmas spirit finally got into her bones.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales

“. . . but the baddies are more interesting sometimes, don't you think? Or the heroes who aren't always very heroic. People who do the right thing for the wrong reasons or the wrong thing for the right reasons.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Bookwanderers

“Tilly, I think you might be onto something.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales

“You’re so much like her, Matilda. I don’t want to make you feel like Harry Potter, but you really do have her eyes,’ Amelia said, and Oskar struggled to suppress a giggle.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Bookwanderers

“Matilda,” her grandad said, his voice cracking. “It’s Boxing Day. You’ve been missing for nearly two days.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales

“Well, is Wonderland really real at all? Is Wonderland more real than where Alice has come from, or where you have come from? You're both visitors to the land, and who's to say which or where or who has the greatest claim on reality?" the cat said.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Bookwanderers

“All stories are rooted in something real, even the most fantastical and impossible ones,” Gretchen said. “Just like these fairy stories all grew from real people or ideas or feelings.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales

“Legere est Peregrinari.” “What does that mean?” Tilly said, pointing. “It’s Latin,” Grandad explained. “It doesn’t have an easy English translation, but the verb peregrinor means to travel about, to roam or to wander, so it essentially means ‘to read is to wander.’ It’s the motto of the Underlibrary.”
― Anna James, The Bookwanderers

“The magic in books that lets us be part of them, and them part of us. I have to believe that if the world were in danger of ignoring the power of stories, or that people started thinking in terms of the limits of their bodies and not the scope of their imaginations, there is something, or someone, or a group of someones, who would do something.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales

“grateful.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales

“is rare that the people who want to be in power are the best people to do it.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales

“Grandad was always hunting in charity shops for copies that had someone’s name in, or messages from people who had given books as presents. “I love thinking about other people reading the books I love, or why someone gave that book as a present—those names and messages are like tiny moments of time travel linking readers from different eras and families and even countries.”
― Anna James, The Bookwanderers

“And what exactly makes someone best-friend material?” Grandad asked. “Someone who sticks by you; someone who never gets bored of talking to you. Someone who’s adventurous, and clever, and brave, and funny . . .” Tilly said, checking her criteria off on her fingers. “Someone like Anne Shirley or Alice from Wonderland—those are my favorite characters, incidentally.” With very few exceptions Tilly found that she much preferred the company of characters in her books to most of the people she knew in real life.”
― Anna James, The Bookwanderers

“Often it’s the things that don’t come naturally to us that are the most important,”
― Anna James, The Bookwanderers

“I know you by heart. You are inside my heart.”
― Anna James, The Bookwanderers

“We leave a trace of book magic in every book we read, a magic that is underestimated.”
― Anna James, Pages & Co.: The Treehouse Library