The more I like a book, the more slowly I read. this spontaneous talking back to a book is one of the things that makes reading so valuable.

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.

There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.

Either a writer doesn't want to talk about his work, or he talks about it more than you want.

There is something about seeing real people on a stage that makes a bad play more intimately, more personally offensive than any other art form.

To choose a writer for a friend is like palling around with your cardiologist, who might be musing as you talk to him that you are a sinking man. A writer's love for another writer is never quite free of malice. He may enjoy discussing your failures even more than you do. He probably sees you as tragic, like his characters - or unworthy of tragedy, which is worse.

We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars.