Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us...on the inside, looking out.

[She] always knew he was a fiction but believed in him anyway.

I’d rather somebody hate what I do than be indifferent to it.

Our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.

If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand...... But until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate vocabulary, nonsense words are the best thing we've got. Ifactifice is one such word.

Literature was the only religion her father practiced, when a book fell on the floor he kissed it, when he was done with a book he tried to give it away to someone who would love it.