“You're ruining that book!" He pointed to the page I'd torn out. "That's a perfectly good book!" Holding his gaze, I reached down and ripped another page out. "I'm making roses." "Well, it's my book." "Sorry." I tore out another.”

“It felt good to be surrounded by books, by all this solid knowledge, by these objects that could be ripped page by page but couldn't be torn if the pages all held together.”

“I always rip out the last page of a book, then it doesn't have to end. I hate endings.”

“I ripped the page from my book - "I don't speak, I'm sorry." - and used it to dry her cheeks, my explanation and apology ran down her face like mascara.”

“His gaze settles on the discarded book. He leans, reaching until his fingertips graze Dante's Inferno, still on its bed of folded sheets. "What have we here?" he asks."Required reading," I say."It's a shame they do that," he says, thumbing through the pages. "Requirement ruins even the best of books.”

“I was walking up and down the rows of books at the antiquarian bookseller's in Karlova Street. Now and then I would take a look out the shop window. It started to snow heavily; holding a book in my hand I watched the snowflakes swirling in front of the wall of St Savior's Church. I returned to my book, savoring its aroma and allowing my eyes to flit over its pages, reading here and there the fragment of a sentence that suddenly sparkled mysteriously because it was taken out of context. I was in no hurry; I was happy to be in a room that smelled pleasantly of old books, where it was warm and quiet, where the pages rustled as they were turned, as if the books were sighing in their sleep. I was glad I didn't have to go out into the darkness and the snowstorm.”