Melissa

“My attachment to books is sensual as well as intellectual. A friend of mine once broke my concentration to remark that I will caress a book as I read along. I hadn't noticed but it's true: my hands move constantly over the pages. I love to hold them, feel them. I love the way books smell. I will fold a paperback in two and break the spine. I will bend the spine of a hardback, felling the turned page rend just enough until it rest loosely in position.”
― James J. Patterson, A Secret Woman: A Novel

“I like to come in mid-afternoon with a book of poems and my journal, when the restaurant is changing over from lunch to dinner, when there are few if any patrons. I can relax. I can think.

Eating and drinking and relaxing and thinking. It is a wonderfully mammalian process for slipping between worlds.”
― James J. Patterson, A Secret Woman: A Novel

“O summer and soft wind. Relieves the heart and makes living cheaper.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“I was six years old when I last peed my pants.”
― Matt Bellassai, Everything Is Awful: And Other Observations