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

When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance.

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

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