I've Always Been Fascinated By The Operation

If People Don't Read, That's Their Choice; A Lifelong Book Habit May Itself Be Some Sort Of Affliction.

It Seems To Me That Everything That Happens To Us Is A Disconcerting Mix Of Choice And Contingency.

I Can Remember The Lush Spring Excitement Of Language In Childhood. Sitting In Church, Rolling It Around My Mouth Like Marbles--tabernacle And Pharisee And Parable, Tresspass And Babylon And Covenant.

I Didn't Write Anything Until I Was Well Over 30.

Forever, Reading Has Been Central, The Necessary Fix, The Support System. Her Life Has Been Informed By Reading. She Has Read Not Just For Distraction, Sustenance, To Pass The Time, But She Has Read In A State Of Primal Innocence, Reading For Enlightenment, For Instruction, Even. ... She Is As Much A Product Of What She Has Read As Of The Way In Which She Has Lived; She Is Like Millions Of Others Built By Books, For Whom Books Are An Essential Foodstuff, Who Could Starve Without.