Silence is not the absence of sound. It is the presence of enough space to hear what is already there: the hum of the refrigerator, the neighbor's footsteps, the slow turning of your own thoughts.

Attention is a kind of hospitality. When I give mine to a page, I am offering it a room with the door closed and the lamp low. The sentence enters and sits down. Sometimes it says nothing for a long time.

I have learned that the best reading happens in the margins of the day. Not when the world is quiet, but when I decide that this small rectangle of time is enough.