We are all refugees from our childhoods. And so we turn, among other things, to stories. To write a story, to read a story, is to be a refugee from the state of refugees. Writers and readers seek a solution to the problem that time passes, that those who have gone are gone and those who will go, which is to say every one of us, will go. For there was a moment when anything was possible. And there will be a moment when nothing is possible. But in between we can create.

She had the bizarre feeling of time bending all around her, as though she was from the past reading about the future, or from the future reading about the past.

Indeed, all books, each and every book ever written, could be said to be offered to the reader as a form of self-help.

I read it over and over again, until I notice the paper getting wet, the ink blurring into little flowers.