“I'm reading Kristin Lavransdatter again - it's one of the greatest poetic books, and the most powerful portrayal of medieval Christendom I know…. I must admit that it makes me cry every time - because it's so real, so true, reaching to the depths of human nature, touching one to the quick.”

“But usually, I watched Linda read. I couldn't believe she'd read so much in summer! Sometimes she laughed, reading her book, and one time she even cried. I didn't know how anyone could make such a big deal about books.”

“Sometimes when I'm in a bookstore or library, I am overwhelmed by all the things that I do not know. Then I am seized by a powerful desire to read all the books, one by one.”

“And so I wait. I wait for time to heal the pain and raise me to me feet once again - so that I can start a new path, my own path, the one that will make me whole again.”

““We all do that. In every day life it’s called making excuses.” True, raw motives are too rough to swallow. By the time most people reach my age, they have glossed their motives so often and so well they fall completely out of touch with them.”

“I have no way of knowing that your story is not true — but you have no way of knowing that my story isn't true. So I will choose the one that I love. I will close the one that, if it's true, makes this reality one worth living in. I'll act as if the life I hope for is real life, and the life that disgusts me — your life, your view of life — is the lie.”

“I'm so darn glad he let me try it again,
'Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin,
I'm so glad that I know more than I knew then,
Gonna keep on trying until I reach my highest ground.”

“Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings.”

“And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.”

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.”