“A little known fact: I read all the time. books were the one thing that got me out of Gatlin, even if it was only for a little while.”

“A little-known fact about me: I read all the time.”

“The thing was, if I had found a way to escape- even for just a little while- I knew the pain would be there waiting for me when I got back.”

“Why d’you read then?” “Partly for pleasure, and because it’s a habit and I’m just as uncomfortable if I don’t read as if I don’t smoke, and partly to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me; I’ve got out of the book all that’s any use to me, and I can’t get anything more if I read it a dozen times. You see, it seems to me, one’s like a closed bud, and most of what one reads and does has no effect at all; but there are certain things that have a peculiar significance for one, and they open a petal; and the petals open one by one and at last the flower is there.”

“I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I'd written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had shortened my life, killed me with its own special little death.”

“I should have known […] I am the rain. […] I am the land […] and I am the rain. The grass will grow out of me in a little while.”