I believe in it, and I trust it too and treasure it above everything, the personal, the personal, the personal! I put my faith in it not only as the source, the ground of meaning in art, in life, but as the meaning itself.

I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.

Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them.

People are mostly layers of violence and tenderness wrapped like bulbs, and it is difficult to say what makes them onions or hyacinths.

Any room in our house at any time in the day was there to read in or to be read to.

Beware of a man with manners.