“Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.”

“Write the book you want to read, the one you cannot find.”

“Eventually, everything gets stuck between a pair of parentheses or buried in the bottom of a trunk.”

“Happiness is the lucky pane of glass you carry in your head. It takes all your cunning just to hang on to it, and once it's smashed you have to move into a different sort of life.”

“...she herself loved the character of Elizabeth Bennet. "I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know.”

“There are chapters in every life which are seldom read, and certainly not aloud.”

“This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.”