The process of learning is a nonstop orgy of wonderment.

We have lived too long. The great days are past.

I mean, when you're tired of book reviews, you're tired of life.

It's a great thing when you feel that you recognize yourself, deeply and movingly, in a work of literature.

As a teenager in Brooklyn Quentin had often imagined himself engaged in martial heroics, but after this he knew, as a cold immutable fact, that he would do anything necessary, sacrificing whatever or whomever he had to, to avoid risking exposure to physical violence. Shame never came into it. He embraced his new identity as a coward. He would run in the other direction. He would lie down and cry and put his arms over his head or play dead. It didn't matter what he had to do, he would do it and be glad.

My ultimate goal is to drive people back to the books, when I think of an adaptation.

There is really no end to life's little humiliations.