Matilda

"It was pleasant to take a hot drink up to her room and have it beside her as she sat in her silent room reading in the empty house in the afternoons. The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She traveled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village."

Matilda, p. 21
By Roald Dahl
Published 1988

For Esmé – with Love and Squalor

"He was rather like a Christmas tree whose lights, wired in series, must all go out if even one bulb is defective."

For Esmé – with Love and Squalor from Nine Stories, p. 106

By J.D. Salinger

Published 1950