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

If my father were still writing essays, every full-grown 'girl' would probably be transformed into a'woman'.

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

It is a truism of epistolary psychology that, for example, a Christmas thank-you note written on December 26 can say any old thing, but if you wait until February, you are convinced that nothing less than Middlemarch will do.

Americans admire success. Englishmen admire heroic failure

The action most worth watching is not at the center of things, but where edges meet.

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