Language is a finding-place not a hiding place. - Jeanette Winterson

"Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world."

"The continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark."

"They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?"

"The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down."

"Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind."