My brother and I were able to fantasize far more extravagantly about our parents' tastes and desires, their aspirations and their vices, by scanning their bookcases than by snooping in their closest. Their selves were on their shelves.

If the soul cannot find its jacket. it is condemned to an eternity of wandering--naked and alone

Anyone who doubts that caffeine is a drug should read some of the prose composed under its influence.

I'd rather have a book, but in a pinch I'll settle for a set of Water Pik instructions.

For me, literature is a way of enlarging myself by learning about people who are not like me.

One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights [...] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer.

A philosophy professor at my college, whose baby became enamored of the portrait of David Hume on a Penguin paperback, had the cover laminated in plastic so her daughter could cut her teeth on the great thinker.