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.

Today I will go to wait for her again, because I cannot help it, because my whole being seems now to be bound up in the being of one so different from myself and yet so exquisitely familiar that I can scarely understand what has happened.

I've noticed Dracula was often as practical a fellow as he was a nasty one.

Boys mystified me, although I dreamed vaguely of men.

We Gypsies know that where Jews are killed, Gypsies are always murthered too. And then a lot of other people, usually.

In those days, I still thoroughly enjoyed the romance I called "by myself"; I didn't know yet how it gets lonely, picks up a sharp edge later on that ruins a day now and then-- ruins more than that, if you're not careful.

When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.