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.

The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

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

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

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.

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

A bookcase is as good as a view, as much of a panorama as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms and zephyrs.