There was only the cemetery itself, spread out in the moonlight like a soft grey hallucination, a stony wilderness of Victorian melancholy.

He is coming, and I am here.

Each spine was an encapsulated memory, each book represented hours, days of pleasure, of immersion into words.

Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it's always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window.

What are you doing?" Nothing. Breaking and entering. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

I have a sort of Christmas-morning sense of the library as a big box full of beautiful books.

we both smile and we are conspirators.