My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one of us could have gone either way.

Inside the peach, there is a stone.

You shouldn't do that," said Laura. "You could set yourself on fire.

War is what happens when language fails.

About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives.

She wasn't ready to settle down, she told her friends. That was one way of putting it. Another was would have been that she had not found anyone to settle down with. There had been several men in her life, but they hadn't been convincing. They'd been somewhat like her table - quickly acquired, brightened up a little, but temporary. The time for that kind of thing was running out, however. She was tired of renting.

We all know that a book is not really a person. It isn’t a human being. But if you are a lover of books as books – as objects, that is – and ignore the human element in them – that is, their voices – you will be committing an error of the soul, because you will be an idolator, or else a fetishist.