“I'm not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I've gotten from books.”

“…I’d have died without them [books]. Even now I’m not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I’ve gotten from books.”

“Why do you read then?'Partly for pleasure, because it's a habit and I'm just as uncomfortable if I don't read as if I don't smoke, and partly to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me; I've got out of the book all that's any use to me and I can't get anything more if I read it a dozen times. ...”

“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”

“It's impossible to know which parts of the woman, if any, were real.”

“You know, there was a part of me that was so defiant, and a part of me that was so ashamed, and I really couldn’t say which was which at any given point in time. ”