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

I can think of few better ways to introduce a child to books than to let her stack them, upend them, rearrange them, and get her fingerprints all over them.

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

I can imagine few worse fates than walking around for the rest of one's life wearing a typo.

E-mail is a modern Penny Post: the world is a single city with a single postal rate.

Some day, as soon as a book is printed it will be simultaneously put into digital form. That will be a wonderful research tool, but it will never substitute for holding the book. I feel certain that at least within my lifetime, everyone will still be going to the bookstore and buying printed books. Thank God I'll die before I have to worry about whether the printed book itself will disappear. That's something I don't want to live to see.

Americans admire success. Englishmen admire heroic failure