Books for me are a home.

Books for me are a home.  Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside.  Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.

There is warmth there too – a hearth.   I sit down with a  book and I am warm.  I know that from chilly nights on the doorstep.

I never had a key to the house in Walter Street, and so entry depended on being let in – or not.  I don’t know why I am still so fond of doorsteps – it seems perverse, given that I spent so much time sitting on one, but the two parts of home that mattered to me, that I could least do without.. (are the) threshold and the hearth.

Jeanette Winterson

Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal