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.

To choose a writer for a friend is like palling around with your cardiologist, who might be musing as you talk to him that you are a sinking man. A writer's love for another writer is never quite free of malice. He may enjoy discussing your failures even more than you do. He probably sees you as tragic, like his characters - or unworthy of tragedy, which is worse.

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 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.

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

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