...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.

Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.

We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.

God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, "Can I be excused the Crucifixion?" No!

Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.

At eighty things do not occur; they recur.