“No, he hadn't known anything about children, but now he'd learned something: a child's mind is open to everything.”

“Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open.”

“Before he'd met Anna, he'd thought he'd known what love was, thought he'd understood about friendship, romance, all o fit, but he hadn't - not at all. Until he'd held Anna in his arms, until he'd let her see his soul, until he'd heard her cry gently when he made love to her for the first time, he'd known nothing.”

“But he'd never been in love. He knew that was what he was really asking himself. He'd never given himself to someone else completely. He'd always held something back, even if he hadn't known that he was doing it. He'd reserved the deepest part of him, the part that truly was him, because he'd feared that once he gave it away he would never get it back.”

“He tried to calm his thoughts, but everything came back to what he'd almost done. Because he hadn't done anything, for years or ever, he had almost done this. Because he had no stories of valor, he had almost done this. Because the efforts he'd made towards creating something like a legacy had failed, he had almost done this.”

“He'd given up blessings he hadn't been worthy of for the chance to be with her, and now he'd lost that, too.”