In novels, I said, people are transfigured by love. They’re elevated, made different, lifted out of their ordinariness…It’s not so much to ask, I said. I just want love to live up to its publicity.

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.

Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.

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.

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 more I like a book, the more slowly I read. this spontaneous talking back to a book is one of the things that makes reading so valuable.