Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.

Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.

My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices.

Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive -- is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a slow pastime that lacks efficiency and does not contribute to the common good.

Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.

Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.