“My mother saw in 'Gone With the Wind' the text of liberating herself, ... She took 'Gone With the Wind' as the central book in her life, and made it the central book in her family.”

“Her library would have been valuable to a bibliophile except she treated her books execrably. I would rarely open a volume that she had not desecrated by underlining her favorite sections with a ball-point pen. Once I had told her that I would rather see a museum bombed than a book underlined, but she dismissed my argument as mere sentimentality. She marked her books so that stunning images and ideas would not be lost to her.”

“She had so mastered the strategies of camouflage that her own history had seemed a series of well-placed mirrors that kept her hidden from herself.”

“Even today, I hunt for the fabulous books that will change me utterly. I find myself happiest in the middle of a book which I forget that I am reading, but am instead immersed in a made-up life lived at the highest pitch.”

“My soul found ease and rest in the companionship of books.”

“As time passed from solstice to mild solstice in those occluded zones of my early childhood, I played beneath the distracted majesty of my mother's blue-eyed gaze. With her eyes on me I felt as if I were being studied by flowers.”

“But even her demons she invested with inordinate beauty, consecrated them with the dignity of her attention.”