My books have been part of my life forever. They have been good soldiers, boon companions. Every book has survived numerous purges over the years; each book has repeatedly been called onto the carpet and asked to explain itself. I own no book that has not fought the good fight, taken on all comers, and earned the right to remain. If a book is there, it is there for a reason.

People who need to possess the physical copy of a book, and not merely an electronic version, are in some sense mysteics. We believe that the objects themselves are sacred, not just the stories they tell. We believe that books possess the power to transubstantiate, to turn darkness into light, to make being out of nothingness.

Books did not need to be beautiful back in the Fifties, because nothing else was beautiful back then. Books were simply there: you read them because they were diverting or illuminating or in some way useful but not because the books themselves were aesthetically appealing.

Every life, even the best ones, ends in sadness. Books hold out hope that things may end otherwise.

Electronic books are ideal for people who value the information contained in them, or who have vision problems, or who like to read on the subway, or who do not want other people to see how they are amusing themselves, or who have storage and clutter issues, but they are useless for people who are engaged in an intense, lifelong love affair with books. Books that we can touch; books that we can smell; books that we can depend on.

Saddling another person with a book he did not ask for has always seemed to me like a huge psychological imposition, like forcing someone to eat a chicken biryani without so much as inquiring whether they like cilantro.

It was once argued that 'Starring Sylvester Stallone' were the three scariest words in the English language but until I saw Adam Sandler I'd always thought the three scariest words in the English language were 'starring Dan Aykroyd.'