“Men pass my grave, and say, "'Twere well to sleep,Like such an one, amid the uncaring dead!"How should they know the vigils that I keep,The tears I shed?”

“He'll be down with the books. My old septon used to say books are dead men talking. Dead men should keep quiet is what I say. No one wants to hear a dead man's yabber.”

“How can I shed tears for a man I should never have allowed to touch me in any way?”

“The tears I feel todayI'll wait to shed tomorrow.Though I'll not sleep this nightNor find surcease from sorrow.My eyes must keep their sight:I dare not be tear-blinded.I must be free to talkNot choked with grief, clear-minded.My mouth cannot betrayThe anguish that I know.Yes, I'll keep my tears til later:But my grief will never go.”

“Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic. As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head.”

“How nice it would be to be dead if only we could know we were dead. That is what I hate, the not being able to turn round in the grave and to say It is over.”