I wanted to tell her that she was the first beautiful thing I had seen in three years. That the sight of her yawning to the back of her hand was enough to drive the breath from me. How I sometimes lost the sense of her words in the sweet fluting of her voice. I wanted to say that if she were with me then somehow nothing could ever be wrong for me again.

I'm kind of balanced between excited about the potential of the project, and the knowledge that I shouldn't get my hopes up. I like to be practical, and the truth is, these deals fall apart all the time.

My thought is, if you're a book lover, you're going to enjoy winning a book even if it's not something you'd ordinarily pick up on your own. It's a chance to expand your horizons a little.

That is like throwing two virgins into a bed. Enthusiasm, passion, and ignorance are not a good combination. Someone is likely to get hurt.

Stories only happen to people who can tell them.

It is quite a thing. There are so many men, all endlessly trying to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me lest I fall.

I'm not a stereotypical professor type. I don't smoke a pipe and wear a tweedy jacket. I'm more like a student who stayed at the university for so long that they gave him a job to keep him out of trouble.