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

A book is meant not only to be read, but to haunt you, to importune you like a lover or a parent, to be in your teeth like a piece of gristle.

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives.

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.

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

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