“No one has written adequately of what happens when enough of the body's naked surface is pressed against another human being's. It is a slow dismantling of ego, a suspension of the instinct to distinguish Me from Not Me.”

“Then, all but instinctively, I took her in my arms. Pressed against me, her whole body trembling, she continued to cry without a sound.”

“He kissed me for a long moment, holding my shoulders, perhaps to keep me from pressing my whole body against his. Then he tried to lift my bag."My God," he said. "What happened?""I found out one may check out twenty books at a time from the school library.”

“There is something called the rapture of the deep, and it refers to what happens when a deep-sea diver spends too much time at the bottom of the ocean and can't tell which way is up. When he surfaces, he's liable to have a condition called the bends, where the body can't adapt to the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. All of this happens to me when I surface from a great book.”

“FROM ELEANOR GILLON I finished Racing with the Rain this morning and WOW, what a great book. It kept me wondering what was going to happen next, full of suspense, reality of life and I got a bit of a history lesson. Thanks Ken and I hope you are working on another one!”

“This intimacy is not necessary; no one is compelling me to open my inmost self and lay it naked, undefended, against that of another – merely for the joy of the communion.”