What shop did this book come from? she asked. Her father was looking worried at the cooker. He always got rice wrong. I don't know, Brooksie, he said, I don't remember. That was unimaginable, not remembering where a book has come from! and where it was bought from! That was part of the whole history, the whole point, of any book that you owned! And when you picked it up later in the house at home, you knew, you just knew by looking and having it in your hand, where it came from and where you got it and when and why you'd decided to buy it.

Books mean all possibilities. They mean moving out of yourself, losing yourself, dying of thirst and living to your full. They mean everything.

We'd never expect to understand a piece of music on one listen, but we tend to believe we've read a book after reading it just once.

To be known so well by someone is an unimaginable gift. But to be imagined so well by someone is even better.

Fashion is fickle, and I was published because I was fashionable. Because I was gay.

But everything written has style. The list of ingredients on the side of a cornflakes box has style. And everything literary has literary style. And style is integral to a work. How something is told correlates with - more - makes what's being told. A story is its style.

Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before it's too late.