As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

No ... eight days a week.

Perhaps you'd like to see the library," Sean commented with a wave of his hand. "Tim said you like books."

"How fabulous!" Emily exclaimed at the doorway to a book-lined room.

I look at him, look at the book, remember, this book, this moment, the first book I ever loved

I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.

Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go.

I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.