Old or new, the only sign I always try to rid my books of (usually with little success) is the price-sticker that malignant booksellers attach to the backs. These evil white scabs rip off with difficulty, leaving leprous wounds and traces of slime to which adhere the dust and fluff of ages, making me wish for a special gummy hell to which the inventor of these stickers would be condemned.

In any of my pages in any of my books may life a perfect account of my secret experience of the world.

Existing libraries, in their very being, seem to question the authority of those in power.

But a reader's ambition knows no bounds.

Every reader has found charms by which to secure possession of a page that, by magic, becomes as if never read before, fresh and immaculate.

We seem to live a culture that doesn't want blemishes. The vision of most beautiful models... airbrushed in order to be seen as perfect, infects our notion of how literature should be written.

Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.