One fab thing from that book I just finished --- is that she puts a quote from another book, poem, or play at the head of each chapter, and each quote is actually related to what will be happening in that particular chapter.... the quotes are from all over the world, and from all different styles of writing.
Two quotes in particular struck me -- I think mainly because of my other love - scrapbooking...
The first one I have heard before but didn't know where it came from... and in Inkspell it is listed as being a Chinese proverb --
"The strongest memory is weaker than the palest ink."
One of the best reasons to scrapbook -- because even if you didn't use acid free papers or any other extreme archival efforts... your memories would last 500 times longer than your memory! (especially if you are like me, and already forgetting things at age 34!!)
The other quote is actually from the text itself... the main character, a girl called Meggie, is a book lover and is looking over her favorite books (she keeps them in a box and takes them with her everywhere she goes) --
"How well worn they all were... "Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo (her father) had said when, on Meggie's last birthday, they were looking at all her dear old books again. "As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells... and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower.... both strange and familiar." "
When I read that it kind of sent chills up my spine -- because I have experienced that, re-reading a book I read when I was much younger, and kind of feeling time go backwards, remembering some of the feelings, thoughts, smells and sounds from that time... very amazing.