She was a do-gooder, which means that all the ill she did, she did without realizing it.

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.

Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words on the other hand, were a lifeline. They left their hushed rhythm behind, a counter to the slow in and out of Emmeline's breathing.

She was a do-gooder, which means that all the ill she did, she did without realizing it.

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

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

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.