Tara Bray Smith

“When the girl at the squat got her throat slit, and Jacob got marked, Nix had been in Portland a little under a year. He had just bought a SpongeBob sleeping bag from Goodwill and had started to feel something like safe. But then, a roll or two of dust every other week helped with that.”

“And her eyes, violet, like the sky before a storm. Ralph and Trish had brown eyes. Max's were hazel. But Ondine. No, Ondine's eyes had to be purple, wide set, and heavily lashed. Beyonce and Yoda's love child.”

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that people write the darnedest things in the margins of their books.”

“Reading, for me, is like this: consumptive, pleasing, calming, as much as edifying. It's how I feel after a good dinner. That's why I do it so often: It feels wonderful. The book is mind and I insert myself into it, cover it entire, ear my way through every last slash and dot. That's something you can do with a book, unlike television or movies or the Internet. You can eat it, or mark it, like a dog does on a hydrant. ”

“Certain bookworms eat books. Eat them, swear in them, spill things on them.”

“I never minded the random scribblings of other readers, found them interesting in fact. It is a truth universally acknowledged that people write the darndest things in the margins of their books.”

“I used to always read with a pen in my hand, as if the author and I were in a conversation. ”