Ultimately, the number of books always exceeds the space they are granted.

Not until I came to Canada did I realize that snow was a four-letter word.

Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.

But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence.

Without Leskov there would be no Bulgakov, no Chekhov, but also no Garca Mrquez and Julio Cortzar. . . . Leskov is the essential storyteller: he does not portray life, he creates it in all its wonder and terror and magic.

At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.

I've never really understood attachment to a place for reasons of birth. That my mother happened to give birth to me in a certain place doesn't, to my mind, justify any thankfulness towards that place. It could have been anywhere.