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

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

The funeral was over, at last I could cry. Except that I couldn't. My tears, kept in too long, had fossilized. They would have to stay in forever now.

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

But there can be no secrets in a house where there are children.

But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grown pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.

She could not read a book for fear of the feelings she might find in it.