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 contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.

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.

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.

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

If a book is really good, it deserves to be read again, and if it's great, it should be read at least three times.

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.