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

You can miss a lot by sticking to the point.

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

To use an electronics analogy, closing a book on a bookmark is like pressing the Stop button, whereas when you leave the book facedown, you've only pressed Pause.

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

When the Irish novelist John McGahern was a child, his sisters unlaced and removed one of his shoes while he was reading. He did not stir. They placed a straw hat on his head. No response. Only when they took away the wooden chair on which he was sitting did he, as he puts it, 'wake out of the book'.