tolstoy
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Anyone who thinks books are sterile objects hasn’t really drawn breath in a library. The older volumes are autumnal, evocative of smoke and decayed leaves. The newer ones smell like glue and vanilla and import. Books have a sound, too—turn their pages for enough hours and years and you start to rely on it, just as people who live by the shore assimilate the rhythm of the waves: the sweep and ripple marking the end of a page, a sound that seems to be made by the turning of your thoughts rather than the movement of your hand.
Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story
(Source: thesimplestofthings, via teachingliteracy)