Boys do not leave their boyhood behind when they leave off their school uniform.

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

When one is nothing, one invents. It fills a void.

What better way to get to know someone than through her choice and treatment of books?

Of course I loved books more than people.

He didn't know of course. Not really. And yet that was what he said, and I was soothed to hear it. For I knew what he meant. We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delineaments, weight, and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all. "I know," he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.

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.