“She said it out loud, the words distributed into a room that was full of cold air and books. Books everywhere! Each wall was armed with overcrowded yet immaculate shelving. It was barely possible to see paintwork. There were all different styles and sizes of lettering on the spines of the black, the red, the gray, the every-colored books. It was one of the most beautiful things Liesel Meminger had ever seen.With wonder, she smiled.That such a room existed!”

“What filled the rooms of Grete's cottage so decidedly were woven baskets and wooden boxes and clay pots glazed in red and blue, each with its own mishmash of this and that. Roots and leaves still redolent of dirt. Balls of scratchy wool-purple twining into pink easing into periwinkle fading into gray. At least three boxes held squares and strips of fabric, all colors, and eight pots overflowed with apples. The walls were lined with shelves, the shelves were lined with books. Wordless spines peered out. As soon as Isabelle saw them, she itched to open it up and read it from cover to cover.”

“And this is the library,” Mrs. Simcosky said, leading Beth into a generous room with a fire flickering in a river rock fireplace. “Or, as Mason liked to call it, my love den.” She drifted to one of the floor to ceiling book shelves and trailed her fingers down a bevy of colorful spines. “He used to call my books ‘the other men’.”

“Simon's walls were covered in what looked like pages ripped from a comic book, but when I squinted, I realized they were hand drawn. Some were black-and-white, but most were in full color,everything from character sketches to splash panels to full pages, done in a style that wasn't quite manga, wasn'tquite comic book.”

“Aside from the posters, wherever there was room, there were books. Stacks and stacks of books. Books crammed into mismatched shelves and towers of books up to the ceiling. I liked my books.”

“She fancied herself superiour to her surroundings: surely there were higher things to live for. Yet the ugliness of this room was but a part of what she felt to be the dreariness of all life outside of books.”