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.

Every great narrative is at least two narratives, if not more - the thing that is on the surface and then the things underneath which are invisible.

remember you must live. remember you most love. remainder you mist leaf.

I went to the top of Vesuvius and looked in.

Then I saw her smile so close to my eye that there was nothing to see but the smile and the thought came into my head that I’d never been inside a smile before. Who’d have thought being inside a smile would be so ancient and so modern both at once

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

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.