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

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

Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.

The more I like a book, the more reluctant I am to turn the page. Lovers, even book lovers, tend to cling. No one-night stands or "reads" for them.

If a book is really good, it deserves to be read again, and if it's great, it should be read at least three times.

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.

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