There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere.

What better way to get to know someone than through her choice and treatment of books?

For me to see is to read. It has always been that way.

For it must be very lonely being dead.

But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grown pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.

Politeness. Now there's a poor man's virtue if ever there was one. What's so admirable about inoffensiveness, I should like to know. After all, it's easily achieved. One needs no particular talent to be polite. On the contrary, being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else. People with ambition don't give a damn what other people think about them.

Of course I loved books more than people.