“To read is to enter into the ‘reflective, observant life of the avid reader.’” -- Alan Bennett, An Uncommon Reader

“The domestic novel can be credited with strengthening and shaping the female reader’s aspirations to matter, to make something special of herself.” -- Helen Brownstein, Becoming a Heroine

“If we start reading with an open mind, we soon find ourselves reading creatively. The first sign of creative reading is that we lose ourselves in the imagined world. . . . Once in the world of the novel, the good reader lives in it. [S]he recreates the vision of the artist.” -- Katherine Lever, The Novel and the Reader

“When you are young [or old], every book you truly fall in love with is a life of yours, one that you have, as it were, lived in the past and now can remember in full.” -- Mark Edmundson, Teacher

“When the heroine achieves freedom, she chooses the hero. The happy ending celebrates this.” -- Pamela Regis, A Natural History of the Romance Novel

“A romance novel is the story of the mutual liberation of a pair of lovers from their false conceptions of themselves. Their union at the end empowers them to liberate their world as well as themselves.” -- Kate Moore, www.katemoore.com