“When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.”

“When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts,nothing helps me so much as running to my books.They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.”

“So I had nothing to distract me from my books and their other worlds that swallowed me whole, from Narnia to the Wisconsin woods, from a small town in Sweden to the red earth of Prince Edward Island. Nothing and no one interested me as much as my books.”

“The books...they helped keep me from losing my mind altogether.”

“As I write down my thought it sometimes escapes me, but that reminds me of my weakness, which I am always forgetting, and teaches me as much as my forgotten thought, for I care only about knowing that I am nothing.”

“I never think of nothing. The closest I come to a blank mind is when I am counting, fucking, or drinking. The rest of the time, my thoughts are like a hamster on a wheel, running endlessly but getting nowhere.”