"It doesn't matter what you do...so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away."
"For if we're destroyed, the knowledge is dead...We're nothing more than dust jackets for books...so many pages to a person..."
"There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing."
"I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense."
"He glanced back at the wall. How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for how many people did you know who reflected your own light to you? People were more often--he searched for a simile, found one in his work--torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?"
"I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense."