Our language needs endless synonyms for beautiful; the eyes could see what the tongue cannot possibly describe.

The library furnished our dreams, helped us shape our ambitions, made up people of books and ideas and grand designs.

I can’t help being a gorgeous fiend. It’s just the card I drew.

We all suffer under a curse, the curse that we know more than we can endure, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing we can do about the force and the lure of this knowledge.

Pride is the parent of destruction; pride eats the mind and the heart and the soul alive.

The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation.

… in the relentless and meaningless manner one searches for something in a nightmare, coming on doors that won’t open or drawers that won’t shut, struggling over and over against the same meaningless thing, not knowing why the effort seems so desperate, why the sudden sight of a chair with a shawl thrown over it inspires the mind with horror.