“The shop acquired evidence of its unlikely existence. A report card displayed the poor grades of the boy who had become its author. Rejection letters could be shown to people standing beside the book that had survived them. Walter gave these old judgments places where they could continue doing a useful job: entertaining his customers.”

“For so many years, the stories could only happen where I was. They went to work with me, waited through the practical business of the day, and disappeared whenever I forgot them. Putting them into words gives them somewhere else to exist. Another person can find them there.”