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

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

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.

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.

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.

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.