A Good Novel Begins With A Small

A Year And A Half After The End Of The War And The German Occupation, Paris Was Muted And Looked Bruised And Forlorn. Everywhere I Went, I Sensed The Tracks Of The Wolf That Had Tried To Devour The City. But Paris Proved Inedible, As It Had Been Ever Since Its Tribal Beginnings On An Island In The Seine, The Ile De La Cité.

It Was Hard To Reassure Grown-ups When You Weren't Certain Yourself What You Were Feeling And Thinking—when Thoughts Dissolved Before You Could Name Them.

To Be Human Is To Be In A Story.

There Was No Way To Grasp The Reality Of The Present Which Slid Away Each Second, Invisible As Air; Reality Only Existed After The Fact, In One's Vision Of The Past.

When You Read To A Child, When You Put A Book In A Child's Hands, You Are Bringing That Child News Of The Infinitely Varied Nature Of Life. You Are An Awakener.