‎"It’s not as if I don’t have anything to read; there’s a tower of perfectly good unread books next to my bed, not to mention the shelves of books in the living room I’ve been meaning to reread. I find myself, maddeningly, hungry for the next one, as yet unknown. I no longer try to analyze this hunger; I capitulated long ago to the book lust that’s afflicted me most of my life.

How do you press a wildflower into the pages of an e-book?

Books were in the world; the world was in books.

Books are slow. They require time; they are written slowly, published slowly, and read slowly.

Rereading a favorite novel first read 5, 10, or 20 years ago, is a measure of our travel, how far we've come; it's a way of visiting an earlier self.

I've had many more thousands of books in my possession than my shelves at home would indicate. At one time, I tried to keep them all, but that quest soon became impossible; I now only keep the ones I'm sure I'm going to reread, the ones I'm definitely going to read before I die, and the ones I can't bear to part with because of an aesthetic or emotional attachment.

Maturity and experience shouldn't stop one from craving silly things like sliding down bannisters.