Well Said: Library books and the power of good stories

It had that comfortably sprung, lived-in look that library books with a lively circulation always get; bent page corners, a dab of mustard on page 331, a whiff of some reader's spilled after-dinner whiskey on page 468. Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us, how good stories abide, unchanged and mutely wise, while we poor humans grow older and slower.

Stephen King, 'Salem's Lot

You'd think this was written by Ray Bradbury instead of Stephen King. Or at least I would've. I'm rereading Salem's Lot in preparation for next week's A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast. King tells his vampire story with a prose style that is direct and to the point, for the most part. However, every so often he veers off into a bit of poetic prose like this. Those are gems of captured image.