The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern...American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity.

Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore superior.

When we're young, everyone over the age of thirty looks middle-aged, everyone over fifty antique. And time, as it goes by, confirms that we weren't that wrong. Those little age differentials, so crucial and so gross when we are young erode. We end up all belonging to the same category, that of the non-young. I've never much minded this myself.

You grew old first not in your own eyes, but in other people's eyes; then, slowly, you agreed with their opinion of you.

When I was still quite young I had a complete presentiment of life. It was like the nauseating smell of cooking escaping from a ventilator: you don't have to have eaten it to know that it would make you throw up.

Often the grind of book promotion wearies you of your own book - though at the same time this frees you from its clutches.

There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers - there always were.