One measures oncoming old age by its deepening of Proust, and its deepening by Proust. How to read a novel? Lovingly, if it shows itself capable of accomodating one's love; and jealously, because it can become the image of one's limitations in time and space, and yet can give the Proustian blessing of more life.

What is supposed to be the very essence of Judaism - which is the notion that it is by study that you make yourself a holy people - is nowhere present in Hebrew tradition before the end of the first or the beginning of the second century of the Common Era.

Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.

I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.

To read in the service of any ideology is not, in my judgment, to read at all.

You know, I don't want to be offensive. But 'Infinite Jest' [regarded by many as Wallace's masterpiece] is just awful. It seems ridiculous to have to say it. He can't think, he can't write. There's no discernible talent.

Real reading is a lonely activity.