I liked reading about the nun who ate so dainty with her fingers she never dripped any grease on herself. I've never been able to make that claim and I use a fork.

What fortune teller would ever have had the nerve to predict that the best years of my life would turn out to be my old age?

I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.

I despair of ever getting it through anybody's head I am not interested in bookshops, I am interested in what's written in the books. I don't browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it.

Standing there, staring at the long shelves crammed with books, I felt myself relax and was suddenly at peace.

History, as they say, is alive and well and living in London.

I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to.