The others were used to Gerald’s way of telling a story while he acted it, but they did sometimes wish he didn’t talk quite so long and so like a book in moments of excitement.

The Enchanted Castle, by E Nesbit
– Talking like a book is an excellent game.  

With extraordinary perceptiveness, she realized that each grown-up must kill the child he was before he himself can live. Nesbit’s vow to survive somehow in the enemy’s consciousness became, finally, her art—when this you see remember me—and the child within continued to the end of the adult’s life.

Gore Vidal, “The Writing of E. Nesbit”, NYRB, Dec 1964