Jane has learned that there is a fate more terrible than solitude: it’s solitude in the company of a husband who essentially misunderstands you. - Maureen Corrigan

Such is the power of words, of writing, of books. Words you loved and will always yearn for. They can inspire you with possibilities you otherwise would have never imagined; they can fill your head with misleading fantasies. They can give you back your seemingly seamless past and place it right alongside your chaotic present.
“But that only happens in books,” my mother, pretty much immune to the power of the written word, would say.
Exactly. That’s why I can’t stop reading them.

As Richard Rodriguez points out in his beautiful and incisive memoir Hunger of Memory, when academics now talk on about race, class, and gender, what they’re usually talking about is race and gender.

Books just don’t register with this crowd. They think I lack common sense; I think they lack a part of their souls.