I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door."

( A Boy in France : Saturday Evening Post CCXVII, March 31, 1945)

As much as anything else, it was a stare, not so paradoxically, of a privacy-lover who, once his privacy has been invaded, doesn't quite approve when the invader just gets up and leaves, one-two-three, like that.

The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. The man who loves to lose himself in a crowd enjoys feverish delights that the egoist locked up in himself as in a box, and the slothful man like a mollusk in his shell, will be eternally deprived of. He adopts as his own all the occupations, all the joys and all the sorrows that chance offers.

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

علو الصوت وكثرة الجدال لا تنفعان دائماً في الإقناع, فقد يصمت من حولك لأنك أعلى صوتاً, لكنك لن تخترق عقولهم وإن وصل صوتك عنان السماء.

I was a shy girl, but when I read, I was adventurous. Books made me bolder.