There is something about seeing real people on a stage that makes a bad play more intimately, more personally offensive than any other art form.

Sometimes it seems that we might have been happier if we had once had an aristocracy to blame everything on.

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.

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

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

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

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.