Let's see if I can write about something other than my heart.

Then I celebrated my Wall of Books. I counted the volumes on my twenty-foot-long modernist bookshelf to make sure none had been misplaced or used as kindling by my subtenant. “You’re my sacred ones,” I told the books. “No one but me still cares about you. But I’m going to keep you with me forever. And one day I’ll make you important again.” I thought about that terrible calumny of the new generation: that books smell.

I love Paul Giamatti - God, that man is like a walking Chekhov. His connection to humanity is unbelievable, and those feelings of low self-esteem - the way that all comes together on the screen? Delicious.

The radio station was playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a sure sign that things were much worse than they appeared.

In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great.

Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.

A writer or any suffering artist-to-be is just an instrument too finely set to the human condition [...]