“I can hardly describe to you the effect of these books. They produced in me an infinity of new images and feelings that sometimes raised me to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk me into the lowest dejection.”

“Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity... We cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access reassurance.”

“you raise me up so i can stand on mountains you raise me up to walk on stormy seas i am strong when i am on your shoulders you raise me up to more than i can be”

“My parents raised me to never feel like I was entitled to success.That you have to work for it. You have to work so hard for it. And sometimes then you don't even get where you need to go.”

“Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful to me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it. The stimulus of reading is indispensable to me, and of meaty reading, even if, of every book, I manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which I can never exhaust.”

“The words tasted sour. I agreed with Patrick. In New Orleans, sometimes death did feel more like socializing. And he knew better than anyone else. He frequented postmortem parties daily, trolling for books.”