When We Lost Our Heads

by Heather O'Neill

The larger the novel she read, the more she was able to disappear from the world, and all the people in it. Each novel was like a voyage she embarked on. She specifically looked for enormous books. Then she would be gone for a longer period of time.

If you read enough books, they are bound to make a peculiar thinker out of you.”

Women never got to be alone. That was too much of a luxury. Women always had someone to take care of.

Books were very much like rats. They went into the walls and hiding places. They proliferated in a secret way that was invisible. A single book could be passed around to twenty people. And when those people read the book, a copy existed in their head. And once a book is in someone’s head, it has a way of spreading through ideas and conversation.