"I grew up not knowing that language was for everyday purposes. I grew up with the Word and the Word was God. Now, many years after a secular Reformation, I still think of language as something holy.

My parents owned six books between them. Two of those were Bibles and the third was a concordance to the Old and New Testaments. The fourth was The House at Pooh Corner. The fifth, The Chatterbox Annual 1923 and the sixth, Malory's Morte d' Arthur.

I found it necessary to smuggle books in and out of the house and I cannot claim too much for the provision of an outside toilet when there is no room of one's own. It was on the toilet that I first read Freud and D.H. Lawrence and perhaps that was the best place, after all. We kept a rubber torch hung on the cistern, and I had to divide my money from a Saturday job between buying books and buying batteries. My mother knew exactly how long her Evereadys would last if used only to illuminate the gap that separated the toilet paper from its function.
Once I had tucked the book back down my knickers to get indoors again, I had to find somewhere to hide it, and anyone with a single bed, standard size, and paperbacks, standard size, will discover that seventy-seven can be accommodated per layer under the mattress. But as my collection grew, I began to worry that my mother might notice that her daughter's bed was rising visibly. One day she did. She burned everything."
from Art [Objects]: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery by Jeanette Winterson