“You once said to me that I talk like a man in a book. I not only talk, but think and feel like one. I have spent my life in books; literature has deeply dyed my brain its own colour. This literary colouring is a protective one--like the brown of the rabbit or the checks of the quail--making it impossible for me to tell where literature ends and I begin.”

“I earnestly hope that all children will spoil this book by painting the illustrations. I wanted to do this myself but the publishers would not let me. But let the colours you lay on be violent, gorgeous, terrific colours, because my feelings are like that.”

“When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears.”

“I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks”

“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.”

“Do you think I'd leave you alone when you're twisted up like this? I tell you I love you, and it feels like I broke your heart.""No one has ever said that to me. In my life, no one's ever said those words to me.""I'm making you a promise right here that you'll hear them from me every day.”