“There is something absent in me, I thought. Something incomplete. Even my mother couldn't describe me. There was something empty in me that in other people was full.”

“Unknown meaning, I thought. That was me.”

“The intriguing thing about playing Scrabble is that as soon as the board is set up in front of me, I don't know any words. Other than cat and bat and rat, everything disappears from the language drawer in my brain. My mother, on the other hand, who normally speaks English like a regular person, spells things like qiviut ("wool of the muskox") and hake.”

“To me, a recently read novel was like a miniature planet: only a few hours earlier I had been breathing its air and living contentedly among its people - and now I was expected to pronounce a judgement about its worth?”

“Are you going to redye it?" "No. My mother hates it, so I'm going to keep it," I said.”

“Opening a book in the middle of a chapter always made me feel like I was interrupting a group of strangers, wandering unannounced into their villages and apartments and taxis and slums.”

“...And as if she had opened a hidden door, I felt the patterned surface break and give way, and the words let me in. I still loved opening a book and feeling like I was physically entering the page, the ordinary world fizzing and blurring around the edges until it disappeared.”