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

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

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

To choose a writer for a friend is like palling around with your cardiologist, who might be musing as you talk to him that you are a sinking man. A writer's love for another writer is never quite free of malice. He may enjoy discussing your failures even more than you do. He probably sees you as tragic, like his characters - or unworthy of tragedy, which is worse.

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.

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives.

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