The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.

Americans like to make money, Canadians like to count it.

A person who knows nothing about literature may be an ignoramus, but many people don't mind being that.

Those who are concerned with the arts are often asked questions, not always sympathetic ones, about the use or value of what they are doing. It is probably impossible to answer such questions directly, or at any rate to answer the people who ask them.

Characters tend to be either for or against the quest. If they assist it, they are idealized as simply gallant or pure; if they obstruct it, they are characterized as simply villainous or cowardly. Hence every typical character...tends to have his moral opposite confronting him, like black and white pieces in a chess game.

The pursuit of beauty is much more dangerous nonsense than the pursuit of truth or goodness, because it affords a stronger temptation to the ego.

The Bible is not interested in arguing, because if you state a thesis of belief you have already stated it's opposite; if you say, I believe in God, you have already suggested the possibility of not believing in him. [p.250]