The moment a book is lent I begin to miss it.

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.

The moment a book is lent I begin to miss it.

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.

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