No one was as close to her as words on a page. She hugged the books to her, lover-like, and heard no sound but what those words said. She preferred to read in a room by herself, but if she read when other people were in the room--she drew nearer to her book to exclude them--she was always conscious that they did not know the words she read, could not hear what she was hearing, as if a voice was whispering inside her telling her something that only she should know.

--Peter Rushforth, Pinkerton's Sister