Of course I loved books more than people.

The funeral was over, at last I could cry. Except that I couldn't. My tears, kept in too long, had fossilized. They would have to stay in forever now.

People with ambition don't give a damn what other people think of them.

Fate, at first so amenable, so reasonable, so open to negotiation, ends up by exacting a cruel revenge for happiness.

A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.

Prescription: 'Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. Take ten pages, twice a day, til end of course.

Though my appetite for food grew frail, my hunger for books was constant.