Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life.

No democracy is born perfect, and none ever gets to be perfect. Yet democracy is superior to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes because, unlike them, democracy is perfectible.

Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life.

Literature is a form of permanent insurrection. Its mission is to arouse, to disturb, to alarm, to keep men in a constant state of dissatisfaction with themselves.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

It is rare and almost impossible for a novel to have only one narrator.

Science is still only a candle glimmering in a great pitch-dark cavern.