A girl expecting rescue never learns to save herself. Even with the means, she will find her courage wanting.

Quite simply the book and I were meant to be together.

Wars make history seem deceptively simple. They provide clear turning points, easy distinctions.: before and after, winner and loser, right and wrong. True history, the past, is not like that. It isn't flat or linear. It has no outline. It is slippery, like liquid; infinite and unknowable, like space. And it is changeable: just when you think you see a pattern, perspective shifts, an alternate version is proffered, a long-forgotten memory resurfaces.

She either confused me with a much older child or else she glimpsed deep inside my soul and perceived a hole that needed filling. I've always chosen to believe the latter. After all, it's the librarian's one sworn purpose to bring books together with their one true reader.

Hope's one thing, expectation's quite another.

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

Ah, well. Life's too short for moderation, wouldn't you say?