The girl in the mirror caught my eye briefly...It is an uncanny feeling, that rare occasion when one catches a glimpse of oneself in repose. An unguarded moment, stripped of artifice, when one forgets to fool even oneself.

After all, it's the librarian's sworn purpose to bring books together with their one true reader.

It's a funny thing, character, the way it brands people as they age, rising from within to leave its scar.

Nighttime is different. Things are otherwise when the world is black. Insecurities and hurts, anxieties and fears grow teeth at night. p493

All true readers have a book, a moment when real life is never going to be able to compete with fiction again.

She doesn't know I cry for the changing times. That just as I reread favourite books, some small part of me hoping for a different ending, I find myself hoping against hope that the war will never come. That this time, somehow, it will leave us be.

Adults weren’t supposed to understand their children and you were doing something wrong if they did.