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

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.

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.

Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one's own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live. There is in men, as Peter Quennell said, "a centrifugal tendency." In our wanderlust, we are lovers looking for consummation.

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

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