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.

When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic, yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.

I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions.

In this cruel world kindness should always be repaid.

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.

Of course I loved books more than people.

As for you, you are alive. But it's not the same as living.