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.

There was no single moment when I thought, Aha! What a great idea! Rather there was a slow and gradual accumulation of numerous small ideas.

I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Books are for me, it must be said, the most important thing.

What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney?

But she had that laugh, and the sound of it was so beautiful that when you heard it, it was as if your eyes saw her through your ears and she was transformed.

I shall start at the beginning. Though of coarse, the beginning is never where you think it is.

When one is nothing, one invents. It fills a void.