a bookstore is one of the few places where all the cantankerous, conflicting, alluring voices of the world co-exist in peace and order and the avid reader is as free as a person can possibly be, because she is free to choose among them.

Ignorance is a self-generating state of mind; one of its characteristics is that it doesn't recognize itself as ignorance.

There can never be such a thing as a free market, because it is human nature to cheat, monopolize, and buy off others so as to corner the market.

Some people do wait their whole lives for something, and it's only when that thing arrives that they find out that they've been waiting rather than living.

Oh, that sound? I'm in the hot tub, reading a novel.

Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.

you know that the urge for revenge is a fact of marital life.