Jamaica Kincaid

The garden has taught me to live, to appreciate the times when things are fallow and when they're not.

I was given a dictionary when I was seven, and I read it because I had nothing else to read. I read it the way you read a book.

I loved Charlotte Bronte when I was little, and I wanted to be Charlotte Bronte the way people want to be a princess.

One of the things reading does, it makes your loneliness manageable if you are an essentially lonely person.