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

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.

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

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

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.

We don't simply read books. We become them.

It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave.