When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry.

Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library.

Printed books usually outlive bookstores and the publishers who brought them out. They sit around, demanding nothing, for decades. That's one of their nicest qualities - their brute persistence.

In fact, you could make the argument that a historian like Shlomo Aronson does in passing in one of his books, that the bombing campaign united the German nation behind Hitler, and actually contributed to the sustaining of his power.

Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.

You need the art in order to love the life.

I no longer want to live in an apartment furnished with forklifts and backhoes.