What is childhood without stories? And how will children fall in love with stories without bookstores? You can't get that from a computer.

I was burning through books every day - stories about people and places I'd never heard of. They were perhaps the only thing that kept me from teetering into utter despair.

I didn't go to bookshops to buy. That's a little bourgeois. I went because they were civilized places. It made me happy there were people who sat down and wrote and wrote and wrote and there were other people who devoted their lives to making those words into books. It was lovely. Like standing in the middle of civilization.

The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the sixpenny tray outside any secondhand bookshop.

I sighed, looking down at the book in my hands. The Years. I rested my elbow against the arm of the couch and cracked the spine. It had the feel of a book that hadn't been touched in decades, creaking, as if to say ahhh.

Books are more precious than jewels. She truly believed this. What did a diamond bring you? A momentary flash of brilliance. A diamond scintillated for second; a book could scintillate forever.