But in the end, in the end one is alone. We are all of us alone. I mean I'm told these days we have to consider ourselves as being in society... but in the end one knows one is alone, that one lives at the heart of a solitude.

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.

In the finest critics one hears the full cry of the human. They tell one why it matters to read.

We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life.

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

Reading well makes children more interesting both to themselves and others, a process in which they will develop a sense of being separate and distinct selves.

Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found?