the best moments in reading

are when you come across something...

which you had thought

special and particular to you.

now here it is,

set down by someone else,

a person you have never met,

someone even who is long dead.

and it is as if a hand

has come out

and taken yours.

Alan Bennett

-----

a story can always break into pieces

while it sits inside a book on a shelf;

and, decades after we have

read it even twenty times;

it can open us up, by cut or caress;

to a new truth

Andre Dubus

-----

clouds are poems,

and the most moving poems

linger on the blackboard so long,

written in cursive so lovely,

they also exist inside our fingertips.

Ann Beattie