That meant I could come back whenever I could manage it. And she was telling me to go. She knew the decision was too big a load for me to carry by myself. She knew me through and through. She had eyes in the back of her heart.

Only the nonreader fears books.

This is how you hold onto your family. You hold them with open hands so they are free to find futures of their own. It's just that simple.

Martin Wilson's What They Always Tell Us hears the voices of the young as they struggle toward adulthood.

Because nobody but a reader ever became a writer.

I'm so far gone that I'm telling the truth. It sounds like a foreign language.

Fame is a funny thing, like a secret, both are hard to keep.