I have gone to [this bookshop] for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn’t known I wanted.

This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.

Isola doesn't approve of small talk and believes in breaking the ice by stomping on it.

His writings have made me his friend.

Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb.

That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.

‎What a blight that woman is. Do you happen to know why? I lean toward a malignant fairy at her christening.