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.

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

If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.

Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books?

It's against my principles to buy a book I haven't read, it's like buying a dress you haven't tried on.

Did I tell you I finally found the perfect page-cutter? It's a pearl-handled fruit knife. My mother left me a dozen of them, I keep one in the pencil cup on my desk. Maybe I go with the wrong kind of people but i'm just not likely to have twelve guests all sitting around simultaneously eating fruit.

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?