There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner.

Of course I loved books more than people. Of course I valued "Jane Eyre" over the anonymous stranger...Of course all of Shakespeare was worth more than a human life.

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

I don't pretend reality is the same for everyone.

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

All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes -- characters even -- caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.

opening the book, i inhaled. the smell of old books, so sharp, so dry you can taste it.