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.

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.

The tension between 'yes' and no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot,' makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

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

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

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.