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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.