So books are real to me, too; they link me not just with other minds but with the vision of other minds, what those minds understand and see. I see their worlds as well as I see my own.

I am a reader. I am a writer. People assume I do these things to escape. You couldn't be more right. I'm escaping a world I don't like. A world I have no control in. In this world, I am nothing. I am a color, a height, a weight, a number. But in the world of books and writing, I am amazing. I am powerful. I am different. People are better. Worlds are endless. Change is possible. Life is manageable.

Death hides within every religion. And at any time it can flash forth-not with healing in its wings but with poison, with that which wounds.

For each person there is a sentence—a series of words—which has the power to destroy them.

I'm tired and I want to rest; I want to get out of this and go lie down somewhere, off where it's dark and no one speaks. Forever.

She makes life over, he realized. She controls life, whereas I just sit on my can and let it happen to me.

That is the artist's job: take mineral rock from dark silent earth, transform it into shining light-reflecting form from sky.