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.

My films are about embarrassment.

You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.

Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.

A book is a device to ignite the imagination.

One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.

One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.