“…she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same — you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again.”

“I couldn't tell you why she felt that way but she felt it everyday. I couldn't help her; I just watched her make the same mistakes again.”

“She was trying to write a novel, it was so slow, you had to destroy so much and start again; so hard to discover whether one was really a writer or just a victim of a literary home environment.”

“It was fascinating to watch her spin the tale. She’d adjusted her accent yet again, adding just a twitch of country. She looked up at him with just the right amount of girlish adoration. As if they were deeply in love and barely beginning to discover one another.He couldn’t help looking back with the same expression. He wasn’t dissembling.”

“Reading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their individual imprint on a book they have read. Once of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.”

“Children are still the way you were as a child, sad and happy in just the same way--and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children.”