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

You never know the palette of the one you kill until the mind disgorges its finest colours.

Old truths and ancient magic, revolution and invention, all conspire to distract us from the passion that in one way or another defeats us all.

I wasn't sent here to find angels! I wasn't sent here to dream of them. I wasn't sent here to hear them sing! I was sent here to be alive. To breathe and sweat and thirst and sometimes cry.

A story of remarkable simplicity and charm. A young swimmer invites us into sea off the coast of California where through her eyes we see an entire realm of creatures we have never known so intimately before. Truly for people of all ages, Lynne Cox's adventure with the baby whale, Grayson, becomes a parable and an experience, thanks not only to the author's great and generous spirit, but through her immense gift for describing nature.

It's not so," I said. "And how long do you think it will sustain you, feeling and seeing and touching and tasting, if there is no love? No one with you?

I know nothing of God or the Devil. I have never seen a vision nor learned a secret that would damn or save my soul.