I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on.

The First Book: Go ahead, it won't bite. Well... maybe a little. More a nip, like. A tingle. It's pleasurable, really. You see, it keeps on opening. You may fall in. Sure, it's hard to get started; remember learning to use knife and fork? Dig in: you'll never reach bottom. It's not like it's the end of the world -- just the world as you think you know it.

When I was young, I was older than I am today.

I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person.

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.

What is ironic is that Allen Ginsberg's importance was in its twilight for so many years that it took his death to bring it to the front page. He electrified an entire world!

Going to the library was the one place we got to go without asking for permission. And they let us choose what we wanted to read. It was a feeling of having a book be mine entirely.