“…only then did I wake out of the book.”

“When the Irish novelist John McGahern was a child, his sisters unlaced and removed one of his shoes while he was reading. He did not stir. They placed a straw hat on his head. No response. Only when they took away the wooden chair on which he was sitting did he, as he puts it, 'wake out of the book'.”

“I was bound to step out of line, if only because I did not know where the line was: if only because I did not know anything.”

“God's Teeth,' he says. 'I was only trying to wake you. You were crying out in your sleep.''I was not,' I say, then look from his neck to my knife.'When I tried to wake you, you stabbed me.' He sounds sore put out. and I cannot blame him.”

“Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid. ”

“When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim`s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the Reaping.”