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

I know there are people who don't read fiction at all, and I find it hard to understand how they can bear to be inside the same head all the time.

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.

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

There are cultures in which it is believed that a name contains all a persons mystical power. That a name should be known only to God and to the person who holds it and to very few privileged others. To pronounce such a name either ones own or someone else's is to invite jeopardy. This it seemed was such a name.

The hours between eight in the evening and one or two in the morning have always been my magic hours. Against the blue candlewick bedspread the white pages of my open book, illuminated by a circle of lamplight, were the gateway to another world.