It was a completely new feeling for me–like someone had just released a million, tiny butterflies loose in my stomach, and they were feverishly flying up into my head and making me lose my mind.

The first book we fall in love with shapes us every bit as much as the first person we fall in love with.

A faint smell of lilac filled the air. There was always lilac in this part of town. Where there were grandmothers, there was always lilac.

The city has to do what any citizen or family does, when you have a dream. You tighten your belt. You sacrifice some luxuries. Above all, you don't waste a dime.

Fire will burn any human body it touches, and starvation will waste it, but stories are not so predictable in their effects.

The relationship between book and reader is intimate, at best a kind of love affair, and first loves are famously tenacious. [...] First love is a momentous step in our emotional education, and in many ways, it shapes us forever.

It was a completely new feeling for me–like someone had just released a million, tiny butterflies loose in my stomach, and they were feverishly flying up into my head and making me lose my mind.