To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.

The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.

It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.

I had no idea of who could play it, no notion really. Then Richard came to see us but I don't think it was decided at that meeting. The trouble is, as soon as you've chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of. It's like going to a place that you've never been to before - you've got a picture of it and then you go there and that picture is totally wiped out by the reality.

I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.

Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.