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Here’s the truth: Who is spared love is spared grief.

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I asked, how is knowledge found? 'You must learn how to read, little sister,' he said.

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As for reading, I wish I had a magic door to a library where I could go in, read for days and days, and come back in the same minute I left. I'm still...more

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Reading off a page is like looking down at a landscape from a balloon – your eye "sees" the story as well as reads it, its layout, its paragraphs and ...more

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If the human condition were the periodic table, maybe love would be hydrogen at No. 1. Death would be helium at No. 2. Power, I reckon, would be where...more

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I’d always worried but kissing’s not so tricky. Your lips know what to do, just like sea anenomes know what to do. Kissing spins you, like Flying Tea-...more

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Perfume counters in department stores, Holly Deblin smells of, the middle of July, and cinnamon Tic Tacs.

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Photos’re better than nothing, but things’re better than photos ’cause the things themselves were part of what was there.

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Will I be some kid’s dad one day? Are any future people lurking deep inside mine?...Which girl’s carrying the other half of my kid, deep in those intr...more

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Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.

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Mother used to say escape is never further than the nearest book.

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Finished in a frenzy that reminded me of our last night in Cambridge. Watched my final sunrise. Enjoyed a last cigarette. Didn’t think the view could ...more

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Why have you given your life to books, TC? Dull, dull, dull! The memoirs are bad enough, but all that ruddy fiction! Hero goes on a journey, stranger ...more

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This, explained the angel, is hell. The people do not love each other. They only want to feed themselves.

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Neither of us had anything to say, or rather we had everything to say, but after all those nights of not saying a word, we suddenly found we had not o...more