Poison for Breakfast

Telling yourself that something does not matter is one of the loneliest things you can do, because you only say it, of course, about things that matter very much. But often, and this is the lonely part, they only matter to you.

Sometimes you can't really tell when you are happy until it is over and you are thinking about it later

A proper library has at least one fantastic librarian, preferably more than one, so if the fantastic librarian goes out to lunch or falls into a tar pit, there will be a spare.

Remember what you learned, years ago: You’re never sorry you brought a book.

Nobody knows anything at all. We have no idea what is happening. We are all bewildered. Someone may say that they understand something, to ourselves or to others, but they are wrong, or guessing, or making it up.

When you apologize, it is a bit like reaching the last page of a book. The book is still there, with your wicked deed inside, but at least it is closed and put on a shelf. Every single thing I ought to have apologized for, and didn’t, is like a book lying open and unfinished.

Countless writers express countless ideas on so many bits of paper, and at some unknown moment some specific book, even some specific sentence, will be the right one for the right person. We never know when some scrap of literature will have its finest hour.

if you told me to describe myself in one word, it would be “not very good at following directions.

We must try, all of us, a lot of the time, our best, and we must keep trying. We do not understand anything but we should try our best to understand each other. We should swim and walk in parks, thinking. We should watch movies and think about what might happen. We should buy food and think about where it comes from, and we should listen to music and wonder what it means. We should have conversations, real and imaginary, with translators handy so that everybody might understand everything we say. We may feel native to where we are, or feel displaced, or both, the way someone going on a journey is also a stranger in town, but nevertheless we should keep reading. We must read mysterious literature, and be as bewildered by it as we are by the world, and we should write down our ideas, turning our stories, as if by magic, into literature.

The human body is about 60% water- more than half of each and every one of us. Being a body of water is something you can say about absolutely anyone. So if you are ever asked what a certain person is like and you cannot think of anything nice to say, you can just reply "they're mostly water.

It is difficult for me to exaggerate how much I love a library.

If I were making up a story, I would have it gray and miserable outside, but it was sunny and miserable instead,

I can compare sadness to a car because both are quite capable of running me over.

A person who spends eight years learning how to make a cake will probably make you a good cake, but a person who spends eight years as an aviator and a tailor and a math tutor and a trainer of bears in the circus will probably kill you in a plane he is flying very badly while wearing a shirt that doesn't fit and fighting off an ill-behaved bear, all the while insisting that seven times six is harmonica.

All good writing is like this. It is why a favorite book feels like an old friend and a new acquaintance at the same time, and the reason a favorite author can be a familiar figure and a mysterious stranger all at once.

Life has so many surprises that the only real surprise in life is when nothing surprising happens.

Zeno was an ancient Greek philosopher who ended up being tortured by people who didn’t like his ideas. Nowadays philosophers are hardly ever tortured, because most people ignore them completely,

I am a writer and comparing things is part of my occupation. Over the years I've learned to compare almost anything to almost anything else. I can compare the pencil I am using to write these words (and these words, and these and these) to my own life, because it is sometimes sharp and sometimes dull, and because it is getting shorter and shorter the more I use it, and because when I try to erase things you can still see the marks they left behind.

So what do we do?... We keep reading, and it just might be our turn to triumph.

Tea is difficult to drink quickly, because it is hot and needs time to steep, and so a cup of tea forces you to slow down and think as you wait for it to cool and become more flavorful.

There are times when one feels stuck in life, no matter how many wonderful shops are around or how much sky is nearby. The world can be wide open around you, but you can feel CLOSED AROUND THE WORLD.

A fantastic librarian can help you find what you are looking for, and not just if it is a book. A fantastic librarian can help you find a hobby or an occupation, a cure or a challenge, a quiet fact or a loud opinion, or a small town where you might hide for months. A fantastic librarian knows more about what you are looking for than you do, the way a cookie in a bakery knows you want to eat it before you even know it is out of the oven, and like a good cookie, a fantastic librarian doesn’t show off about it, just waits silently for you to open your mouth.

I get sad, when I think of my own wicked acts, although I supposed if I weren't sad about them it would mean I didn't care. I'm glad that I care, so I'm a little happy that I'm sad.

Perhaps you are one of us too, investigating your life and thinking about the world, always feeling native to nowhere. We put on disguises sometimes, to pose as people we are not, to hide, or to blend in, or just to see what will happen, hoping that our secrets will never be found out.

I want to be friends with people who are honest and interesting, generous but not ridiculous, thoughtful but who don’t have irritating voices.

We must read mysterious literature, and be as bewildered by it as we are by the world, and we should write down our ideas, turning our stories, as if by magic, into literature.

I love a library. Just to walk inside one, and to breathe in a room where so much literature has been gathered, is such a powerful feeling that it often brings a tear to my eye, although that could also be my mild allergy to dust.

Some people, however, say that they do not eat eggs because they do no like them. This is suspicious. Eggs are tremendously flexible and can be prepared in a variety of ways, all of which are different experiences in one's mouth. If you say you do not like eggs, it is like saying you do not like books or light or wearing a ball gown. It means you simply have not found the right kind.

read something once that describes the sea as “all a case of knives” and I have never forgotten it. It is a description I admire very much, because it is so startling that you know no one else has thought of it before the author did, and yet so perfectly clear that you wonder why you never thought of it yourself. All good writing is like this. It is why a favorite book feels like an old friend and a new acquaintance at the same time, and the reason a favorite author can be a familiar figure and a mysterious stranger all at once.