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

One reason we have children I think is to learn that parts of ourselves we had given up for dead are merely dormant and that the old joys can re emerge fresh and new and in a completely different form.

When I write after dark", observed Cyril Connolly, "the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose

When I visit a new bookstore, I demand cleanliness, computer monitors, and rigorous alphabetization. When I visit a secondhand bookstore, I prefer indifferent housekeeping, sleeping cats, and sufficient organizational chaos.

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

I have never been able to resist a book about books.

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