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.

It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave.

For years they have been using the role of 'sex object' as a cover while they spied out the land.

I feel about lending a book the way most fathers feel about their daughters living with a man out of wedlock.

Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.

The tension between 'yes' and no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot,' makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

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