I guess I was raised in a household with a lot of reverence for the physical sanctity of books. You didn't destroy books.

The danger would be going back, or staying still. The only way out was through. The past was ruins, but the present was still in play.

His crush went from exciting to depressing, as if he'd gone from the first blush of infatuation to the terminal nostalgia of a former lover without even the temporary relief of an actual relationship in between.

That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.

The paradox of the English country house is that its state of permanent decline, the fact that its heyday is always behind it, is part of the seduction, just as it is part of the seduction of books in general.

The real problem with being around James was that he was always the hero. And what did that make you? Either the sidekick or the villain.

Josh speculated about the hypothetical contents of an imaginary porn magazine for intelligent trees that would be entitled Enthouse.