Our clients' faces, with the customary outward paleness and inner glow of the book lover.

I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions.

For it must be very lonely being dead.

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

What better place to kill time than a library?

One gets so used to one's own horrors, one forgets how they must seem to other people.

Still in my coat and hat, I sank onto the stair to read the letter. (I never read without making sure I am in a secure position. I have been like this ever since the age of seven when, sitting on a high wall and reading The Water Babies, I was so seduced by the descriptions of underwater life that I unconsciously relaxed my muscles. Instead of being held buoyant by the water that so vividly surrounded me in my mind, I plummeted to the ground and knocked myself out. I can still feel the scar under my fringe now. Reading can be dangerous.)