“A corner is important. It provides privacy and an anchor and lets you exist independently of the room.”

“Without moral and intellectual independence, there is no anchor for national independence.”

“But there are other words for privacy and independence. They are isolation and loneliness.”

“There were only a few feet of visible space before the locker room turned a corner, giving Cole privacy to do his worst. Shit. Shit. Shit.”

“There are only two worlds - your world, which is the real world, and other worlds, the fantasy. Worlds like this are worlds of the human imagination: their reality, or lack of reality, is not important. What is important is that they are there. these worlds provide an alternative. Provide an escape. Provide a threat. Provide a dream, and power; provide refuge, and pain. They give your world meaning. They do not exist; and thus they are all that matters. ”

“I learned that there are books and there are readers; given even the worst of circumstances, they get together. In the privacy of their own homes or on park benches or on public buses, in the corner of the reference room, at the end of an aisle of fiction, in the middle of the alphabet, they club up and conspire.”