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.

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.

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.

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

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

A bookcase is as good as a view, as much of a panorama as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms and zephyrs.