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

When I write after dark", observed Cyril Connolly, "the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose

A philosophy professor at my college, whose baby became enamored of the portrait of David Hume on a Penguin paperback, had the cover laminated in plastic so her daughter could cut her teeth on the great thinker.

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

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

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.

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