Every so often I take out a volume and read a page or two. After all, reading is looking after in a manner of speaking. Though they're not old enough to be valuable for their age alone, nor important enough to be sought after by collectors, my charges are dear to me, even if, as often as not, they are as dull on the inside as on the outside. No matter how banal the contents, there is always something that touches me. For someone now dead once thought these words significant enough to write them down.

What better place to kill time than a library?

Reading can be dangerous.

Emmeline didn't call me anything. She didn't need, for I was always there. You only need names for the absent.

To anyone who took the trouble to look, I was plainly visible, but when people are expecting to see nothing, that is usually what they see.

Without the past to cast its long shadow, might you see the future more clearly?

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