wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.

In this world,” Franny once observed, “just as you’re trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you.

He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.

I am compulsive about writing, I need to do it the way I need sleep and exercise and food and sex; I can go without it for a while, but then I need it.

The gardener had a dread of small women; he'd always imagined them to have an anger disproportionate to their size.

You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.

When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.