Books never cease to astonish me. When I was a child, I knew–in the incontestable way that children know things–that God was an author who’d imagined me, which is why I (and everyone else) existed:...

In a few minutes I heard the books’ voices: a low, steady, unsupressible hum. I’d heard it many times before. I’ve always had a finely tuned ear for a library’s accumulations of echo and desire....

With a little effort, anything can be shown to connect with anything else: existence is infinitely cross-referenced.