“Her library is a meeting place for all who love books. They discuss matters of the world and matters of the spirit.”

“In the Koran, the first thing God said to Muhammed was 'Read.”

“Right is right, even if you're alone.”

“Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.”

“Whenever she imagined her child, grown up without interference from a judgemental world, she imagined its male and female halves as complementing each other, and as being secretly, almost magically powerful.”

“The probability of separate worlds meeting is very small. The lure of it is immense. We send starships. We fall in love.”

“A bridge is a meeting place . . . a possibility, a metaphor.”