Pen-bereavement is a serious matter.

Anyone who doubts that caffeine is a drug should read some of the prose composed under its influence.

Muses are fickle, and many a writer, peering into the voice, has escaped paralysis by ascribing the creative responsibility to a talisman: a lucky charm, a brand of paper, but most often a writing instrument. Am I writing well? Thank my pen. Am I writing badly? Don't blame me blame my pen. By such displacements does the fearful imagination defend itself.

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

Some friends of theirs had rented their house for several months to an interior decorator. When they returned, they discovered that their entire library had been reorganized by color and size. Shortly thereafter, the decorator met with a fatal automobile accident. I confess that when this story was told, everyone around the dinner table concurred that justice had been served.

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

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