“He read of the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of granite in its lonely sunless exile and longs to be back by the hot, lotus-covered Nile.”

“It's not easy to start over in a new place,' he said. 'Exile is not for everyone. Someone has to stay behind, to receive the letters and greet family members when they come back.”

“I soon discovered that one doesn't simply read Crime and Punishment or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. One reads a certain edition, a specific copy, recognizable by the roughness or the smoothness of its paper, by its scent, by a slight tear on page 72 and a coffee ring on the right-hand corner of the back cover. ”

“Readers will easily recognize the cover of a book they've read, but in a cafe that man over there, is that...is that...well, it's hard to tell - doesn't he have long hair? - oh, he's gone.”

“Punctured, utterly deflated, he dropped into a chair and, covering his face with his hands, began to weep. A few minutes later, however, he thought better of it and took four tablets of soma.Upstairs in his room the Savage was reading Romeo and Juliet.”

“The book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing its cover against her ear as if to lure her back into its printed pages.”