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.

In novels, I said, people are transfigured by love. They’re elevated, made different, lifted out of their ordinariness…It’s not so much to ask, I said. I just want love to live up to its publicity.

The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.

When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance.

Two people making love, she once said, are like one drowned person resuscitating the other.

Ruefulness is one of the classical tones of American fiction. It fosters a native, deglamorized form of anxiety.

The more I like a book, the more reluctant I am to turn the page. Lovers, even book lovers, tend to cling. No one-night stands or "reads" for them.