When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.

I've always been interested in foreign relations. It's my belief that study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present rather than an escape from it.

It was strange, I reflected.. that even in the weirdest circumstances, the most troubling episodes of one's life, the greatest divides from home and familiarity, there were these moments of undeniable joy.

My guess is that he remembers some of me, some of us together, and the rest rolled off him like topsoil in a flash flood.

When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.

I've noticed Dracula was often as practical a fellow as he was a nasty one.

Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light.