If this sounds impressive to you, you’re over thirty.

He has the strangest expression on his face- the emotional equivalent of 404 PAGE NOT FOUND.

The thinnest tendrils of dawn are creeping in from the east. People in New York are softly starting to tweet.

After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this: A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.

All the secrets of the world worth knowing are hiding in plain site.

I'd sit at my kitchen table and start scanning help-wanted ads on my laptop, but then a browser tab would blink and I'd get distracted and follow a link to a long magazine article about genetically modified wine grapes. Too long, actually, so I'd add it to my reading list. Then I'd follow another link to a book review. I'd add the review to my reading list, too, then download the first chapter of the book—third in a series about vampire police. Then, help-wanted ads forgotten, I'd retreat to the living room, put my laptop on my belly, and read all day. I had a lot of free time.

America pays defense contractors to build aircraft carriers. Google pays brilliant programmers to do whatever the hell they want.