- Other people might say they "like" it or even "love" it, but in my vocabulary, "comfortable" was the best scale.
- I would flip open the books and smell them whenever I could, while Granny nagged me, asking what the point of smelling musty books was.
- Books took me to places I could never go otherwise. They shared the confessions of people I'd never met and lives I'd never witnessed.
- These stories on screen existed exactly as they had been filmed and drawn. For example, if a book had the description, "A blond lady sits cross-legged on a brown cushion in a hexagon-shaped house," a visual adaption would have everything else decided as well, from her skin tone and expression to even the length of her fingernails. There was nothing left for me to change in that world.
- But books were different. They had lots of blanks. Blanks between words and even between lines. I could squeeze myself in there and sit, or walk, or scribble down my thoughts. It didn't matter if I had no idea what the words meant Turning the pages was half the battle.
- I'd chew on the letters, savor them, and spit them out with my voice. I'd do this again and again until I memorized all of them.
- That's when I actually feel those incomprehensible words like "love" or "eternity" start speaking to me.
- "At first you feel you are getting the hang of it, but then as time goes by, you feel like the meaning's changing and becoming tarnished. Then, finally, it gets lost.
- Now the meanings were gone. Just like the inside of my head, which had been a blank slate from day one.