No book that is written for an external purpose is going to be a passionately felt book for the writer or the reader. I don't see the point in doing that.

There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence.

Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light.

He brought his great hand to rest on an early edition of Bram Stoker's novel and smiled, but said nothing. Then he moved quietly away into another section.

It touched me to be trusted with something terrible.

...what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?

Recently abandoned women can be complicated.