“This is a book. It is a book I found in a box. I found the box in the attic. The box was in the attic, under the eaves. The attic was hot and still. The air was stale with dust. The dust was from old pictures and books. The dust in the air was made up of the book I found. I breathed the book before I saw it; tasted the book before I read it.”

“I breathed the book before I saw it; tasted the book before I read it.”

“School did give me one of the greatest gifts of my life, though. I learned how to read, and for that I remain thankful. I would have died otherwise. As soon as I was able, I read, alone. Under the covers with a flashlight or in my corner of the attic—I sought solace in books. It was from books that I started to get an inkling of the kinds of assholes I was dealing with. I found allies too, in books, characters my age who were going through or had triumphed against the same bullshit.”

“Instead of making myself write the book I ought to write, the novel that was expected of me, I conjured up the book I myself would have liked to read, the sort by an unknown writer, from another age and another country, discovered in an attic.”

“Life is like a box of chocolates, I'm a nerd and I read books”

“Books, books, books!I had found the secret of a garret roomPiled high with cases in my father’s name;Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and outAmong the giant fossils of my past,Like some small nimble mouse between the ribsOf a mastodon, I nibbled here and thereAt this or that box, pulling through the gap,In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,The first book first. And how I felt it beatUnder my pillow, in the morning’s dark,An hour before the sun would let me read!My books!”