“Nay, it's not the Devil been leading her astray. It's books! That girl has been nothing but trouble ever since she learned how to read.”

“...ever since she had read the girl's novel, a piece of artistry that struck her as wish-fulfilment at its most blatant...”

“She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty.”

“Follow your heart. It rarely leads you astray. It's thinking that gets us into trouble.”

“The book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing its cover against her ear as if to lure her back into its printed pages.”

“To begin with, it's true, she read with trepidation and some unease. The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.”