Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you've finished just to stay near it.

It was a style not of perfection, but warmth. Even mistakes had a good feeling about them

Why me?' I ask God. God says nothing. I laugh and the stars watch. It's good to be alive.

I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.

I watch the beauty for as long as I can, then turn and face the rest of it.

An attribute of Rosa Hubermann, she was a good woman for a crisis.

When we move apart, she looks at me again, till a small tear lifts itself up in her eye. It trips out to find a wrinkle and follows it down.