I have always felt that the action most worth watching is not at the center of things but where edges meet. I like shorelines, weather fronts, international borders. There are interesting frictions and incongruities in these places, and often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either one.

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.

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.

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.

Our view of reality is only a view, not reality itself.

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