"I'd always thought that this soft margin between winter and summer could never be cruel. But now I was as bitten by cruelty as the poet was. Spring is the time of hope.Of inspiring songs and rousing actions. Of possibility,of anticipation, of plans. People emerge from winter after tolerating autumn's capricious start to the season, and know that if spring has arrived then summer isn't far away... Spring is the time of action, of cleaning, of revolution." (p.3)"...innumerable books, many of them excellent, a lot of them trashy but wonderfully so..." (p.7)
"I tasted the smaller atoms of life in those few quiet moments, drinking tea and waiting with the chickens before the rest of the world raised its head." (p.10)
"What I needed, more than anything, were books.... Surrounded by books, I felt safe, secure." (p.46)
