But I’ve been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don’t get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn’t even true at the time—love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions—and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives—then I plead guilty.

Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.

Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists.

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

But that’s one advantage of fiction, you can speed up time.

You lose the world for a glance? Of course you do. That is what the world is for: to lose under the right circunstances.