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.

Two people making love, she once said, are like one drowned person resuscitating the other.

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.

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

Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.

When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance.