Natalie Babbitt
- My Love Affair with the Alphabet
My mother and I used to play a game called Anagrams where you made words out of letters printed on small, tidy squares of thick cardboard. Every once in a while, one would drop on the floor, and Dingo, our dog, would chew it. We didn't mind so much if it was a J or a Q because those were hard letters to use, but it was bad if an E or an S got chewed. Still, we just let them dry out and used them anyway, rumpled though they were with tooth marks.
Langston Hughes
- Dreams
Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams for when dreams go life is a barren field frozen with snow.
Perfumes: The Guide
- Old Book Smell
Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us.
Lillian Morrison
- The Sidewalk Racer / On the Skateboard
Skimming an asphalt sea I swerve, I curve, I sway, I speed to whirring sound an inch above the ground; I'm the sailor and the sail, I'm the driver and the wheel I'm the one and only single engine human auto mobile.
