In this country we're unprecedentedly safe, comfortable, and well fed, with more and better venues for stimulation. And yet if you were asked, 'Is this a happy or unhappy country?' you'd check the 'unhappy' box. We're living in an era of emotional poverty, which is something that serious drug addicts feel most keenly.

It now lately sometimes seemed a black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe.

I read,' I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

The fun of reading as "an exchange between consciousnesses, a way for human beings to talk to each other about stuff we can't normally talk about."

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.

Most of us will still take nihilism over neanderthalism.

She had a brainy girls discomfort about her own beauty and its effects on folks.