The only reason for being young is to outgrow it.

The tantrums of cloth-headed celluloid idols are deemed fit for grown-up conversation, while silence settles over such a truly important matter as food.

There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.

Socrates called himself a midwife of ideas. A great book is often such a midwife, delivering to full existence what has been coiled like an embryo in the dark, silent depths of the brain.

Reading is not an operation performed on something inert but a relationship entered into with another vital being.

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

Mr. Faulkner, of course, is interested in making your mind rather than your flesh creep.