Roy Blount's stuff makes me laugh so hard, sometimes I have to go sit in a room and shut the door

Vacation cruises are advertised as luxurious journeys to exotic places, but a chief pleasure is the reading of books ... . On steamer chairs topside or poolside, in the lounges, everywhere you see men and women with their noses in books, devouring them for hours.

We writers don't really think about whether what we write is good or not. It's too much to worry about. We just put the words down, trying to get them right, operating by some inner sense of pitch and proportion, and from time to time, we stick the stuff in an envelope and ship it to an editor.

Being an English major prepares you for impersonating authority.

Why is divorce so expensive? Because it's worth it!

I was afraid you had deceased,' he said. 'Or gotten engrossed in a long book.

Ha! Easy for nuns to talk about giving up things. That's what they do for a living.