And sometimes then he sat with us for an hour or so, sharing our limbo, listening while I read. Books from any shelf, opened at any page, in which I would start and finish anywhere, mid-sentence sometimes. Wuthering Heights ran into Emma, which gave way to The Eustace Diamonds, which faded into Hard Times, which ceded to The Woman in White. Fragments. It didn't matter. Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words, on the other hand, were a lifeline.

People whose lives are not balanced by a healthy love of money suffer from an appalling obsession with personal integrity.

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

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

I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy

Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so.

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.