“I always gave her a book. An old hardback from the same section in the used bookstore where you'd find Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, and musty scrawled-in Hobbits, the painted paper covers often ripped or gone... My favorite was a sort of illustrated guidebook of pond creatures on which a very young child had written in pencil on each page under the picture of an otterI love otterUnder a muskrat:I love muskratBeaver:I love beaver”

“The library would've cheered me up, most days. I loved the heavy oaken tables, the high walls stacked with books to the ceiling, the musty smell of old pages and the heavy brass fixtures that had gone dark with age and wear.”

“It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone you loved him and when you had nothing else to give you still gave him love. When the last of the chocolate was gone his mother had clasped the child in her arms. It was no use it changed nothing it did not produce more chocolate it did not avert the child's death of her own but it seemed natural to her to do it. The refugee woman in the boat had also covered the little boy with her arm which was no more use against the bullets than a sheet of paper...What mattered were individual relationships and a completely helpless gesture an embrace a tear a word spoken to a dying man could have value in itself.”

“I have always painted pictures where human love floods my colors.”

“He says, "Keats for my Keats. Look inside."I gently open the cover. Inside, written in pencil,is an old inscription.1903, To my love.-SUnderneath is more pencil, written in Brooklyn's neat print.Even Keats speaks of chaos.There is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music.All my love,B”

“From the time I began to read, as a child, I loved to feel their heft in my hand and the warm spot caused by their intimate weight in my lap; I loved the crisp whisper of a page turning, the musky odor of old paper and the sharp inky whiff of new pages. Leather bindings sent me into ecstasy. I even loved to gaze at a closed book and daydream about the possibilities inside.”