With the poetry of plain speaking, Shannon Hitchcock recreates the daily drama of a vanished world.

The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you.

I read because one life isn't enough and in the pages of a book, I can be anybody.

Only the nonreader fears books.

We write by the light of every story we have ever read.

Anyone who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.

We don't write what we know. We write what we wonder about.

If you cannot find yourself on the page very early in life, you will go looking for yourself in all the wrong places.

Because nobody but a reader ever became a writer.

This is how you hold onto your family. You hold them with open hands so they are free to find futures of their own. It's just that simple.

When I read a good book, it's like traveling the world without ever leaving my chair.

How you treat an animal often shows your true color.

You have not lost if you have learned one new lesson.You have not lost if you have helped one new person.You have not lost if you have overcome one new obstacle.

Fill the pages of your life with the exciting story of triumph and tragedy, failure and victory, desire and discovery.

Frankie, " she said softly, "do you know what my idea of heaven is? A place where the windows are always clean, and the people I want can always come to dinner.

Of course I want the moon. And were you to offer it, I'd propose as a trade the stars in my eyes.

It's all about control.

Democratic nation states remain far more capable of managing the circuit of coercion, taxation and legitimation than any transnational bodies.

We South Africans are also crazy about football, so the World Cup can be nothing but successful.

Journalists are simply leftists disguised as reporters. They're political activists disguised as reporters.

Well, there's no question that a good script is an absolutely essential, maybe the essential thing for a movie.