"I walked away from him, wordless in a word-full sea.I stared along the shelves, overwhelmed by a new hunger that came from a famine I did not even know I had endured. I ran my fingers along the shelves, not knowing which book to open, overwhelmed by a desire to feast on every one simultaneously. I wanted to gorge myself on syntax, lick words curling form the page into my mouth, nibble daintily on alphabets as if they were sweets...

I looked up, feeling giddy. The shelves seemed to go upward for ever and I felt them leaning over me as if ready to topple. I saw books flying off the shelves, their pages spread open like birds' wings, and rushing towards me in dark cawing flocks. Words tumbled from the pages and shower over me like sparks from an explosion. I shut my eyes and felt myself disappearing into a blast of fragments of script, which were forcing themselves into my mouth like feathers. Disembodied words that I could not read glowed red with heat and attached themselves to my skin as if branding me. I wast turning into a book I could not read. The story was intelligible and I did not know how it would end. Somehow I knew that I was not the story-teller, I was the story."