One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.

I think we must quote whenever we feel that the allusion is interesting or helpful or amusing.

Science fiction is a kind of archaeology of the future.

[Books] will visit you at your convenience, whether you are lonesome or not, on rainy days or fair. They propose themselves as either transient acquaintances or permanent friends. They will stay as long as you like, departing or returning as you wish. Their friendship entails no obligation. Best of all, and not always true of our merely human friends, they have Cleopatra's infinite variety.

A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke-and that the joke is oneself.

Gertrude Stein was masterly in making nothing happen very slowly

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.