Our attitude toward our own culture has recently been characterized by two qualities, braggadocio and petulance. Braggadocio - empty boasting of American power, American virtue, American know-how - has dominated our foreign relations now for some decades. Here at home - within the family, so to speak - our attitude to our culture expresses a superficially different spirit, the spirit of petulance. Never before, perhaps, has a culture been so fragmented into groups, each full of its own virtue, each annoyed and irritated at the others.

A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.

The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.

There is no disinfectant like success.

A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well because it was selling well.

Reading is like the sex act - done privately, and often in bed.

But rather that we should lose our sense that neither can become the other, that the traditional novel form continues to enlarge our experience in those very areas where the wide-angle lense and the Cinerama screen tend to narrow it.