I was always my own teacher.

it doesn t matter if it takes a long time getting there; the point is to have a destination.

I had to grow up and learn to listen for the unspoken as well as the spoken-and to know a truth.

My main disappointment was always that a book had to end. And then what? But I don't think I was ever disappointed by the books. I must have been what any author would consider an ideal reader. I felt every pain and pleasure suffered or enjoyed by all the characters. Oh, but I identified!

For the night was not impartial. No, the night loved some more than others, served some more than others.

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them - with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them.

One place understood helps us understand all places better