The book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing its cover against her ear as if to lure her back into its printed pages.

A library book, I imagine, is a happy book.

He longed for the deep as she longed for the night sky and for white lilies floating on water -- although she still tried to convince herself that love alone could feed her soul.

Please," she whispered as she opened the book, "please get me out of here just for an hour or so, please take me far, far away

Hey, don't take this the wrong way, but don't come back, ok?

I'm perfectly happy to know the world at secondhand. It's a lot safer.

Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said..."As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar.