“Somewhere embedded in every ordinary book are the five or six words for which really all the rest will be written.”

“The helpful thought for which you lookIs written somewhere in a book.”

“In an infinite universe, all things are possible -- within physical limits, that is -- and any book that can be written does physically exist. Somewhere. The book is the bridge between the words and the physical actuality.”

“The Virgin Mary is called the [Greek words] (the "book of the Word of life") by the Greek Church. The book of the Gospel, the book of Christ's origins and life, can be written and proclaimed because God has first written his living Word in the living book of the Virgin's being, which she has offered to her Lord in all its purity and humility—the whiteness of a chaste, empty page. If the name of Mary does not often appear in the pages of the Gospel as evident participant in the action, it is because she is the human ground of humility and obedience upon which every letter of Christ's life is written. She is the Theotokos, too, in the sense that she is the book that bears, and is inscribed with, the Word of God. She keeps her silence that he might resonate the more plainly within her.”

“To care about words, to have a stake in what is written, to believe in the power of books - this overwhelms the rest, and beside it one's life becomes very small.”

“It's written in our DNA somewhere: our children first, the rest of the world second.”