All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal.

But what struck me was the book-madness of the place--books lay scattered across the unmade bed and the top of a battered-looking desk, books stood in knee-high piles on the floor, books were crammed sideways and right side up in a narrow bookcase that rose higher than my head and leaned dangerously from the wall, books sat in stacks on top of a dingy dresser. The closet door was propped open by a pile of books, and from beneath the bed a book stuck out beside the toe of a maroon slipper.

So imagine a fire going -- wood snapping the way it does when it’s a little green — the wind rattling the windows behind the curtains -- and one of those Chopin melodies that feel like sorrow and ecstasy all mixed together pouring from the keys -- and you have my idea of happiness. Or just reading, reading and lamplight, the sound of pages turning. And so you dare to be happy. You do that thing. You dare.

Perhaps sound is only an insanity of silence, a mad gibber of empty space grown fearful of listening to itself and hearing nothing.

I’m pleased by anything in myself that strikes me as not myself.

I saw that I was in danger of becoming ordinary, and I understood that from now on I would have to be vigilant.

All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal.