I decided that my existence would be one of books and silence.

Sometimes feeling and thinking are one and the same.

A Gentleman's agreement cannot be broken without breaking the person who has entered into it.

Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they're there to make our most absurd dreams come true.

After a while it occurred to me that between the covers of each of those books lay a boundless universe waiting to be discovered while beyond those walls, in the outside world, people allowed life to pass by in afternoons of football and radio soaps, content to do little more than gaze at their navels.

Over time, loneliness gets inside you and doesn't go away.

I was secretly convinced that with such a marvel one would be able to write anything, from novels to encyclopedias, and letters whose supernatural power would surpass any postal limitations--a letter written with that pen would reach the most remote corners of the world, even that unknowable place to which my father said my mother had gone and from where she would never return.