““I thought I would be safe here.”
“You are.” For the first time, he touched her, touched her hand. “Safe from everything but paper and ink. Please. Put those down.”
“Paper and ink.” She clutched the books to her ample chest. “They’re not nothing, Alec. They’re pretty much everything to me: the embodiment of ideas, of thought—of free and open thought. Of inquiry and supposition. All of it.””

—  Ellen Kushner, book The Privilege of the Sword

Part IV, Chapter V (p. 386)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)

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Ellen Kushner17
American writer 1955

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