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

If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.

Pen-bereavement is a serious matter.

Books wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and on our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in it themselves.

In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar.

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.

It has long been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf. On this shelf rests a small, mysterious completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection, reveals a good deal about its owner.