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

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.

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

E-mail is a modern Penny Post: the world is a single city with a single postal rate.

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

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.

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