The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.

Libraries are absolutely at the center of my life. Since I couldn't afford to go to college, I attended the library three or four days a week from the age of eighteen on, and graduated from the library when I was twenty-eight.

How to feel your way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of your skull.

A book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it.

[He] was always here to offer cups of good clear Walden Pond, or shout down the deep well of Shakespeare and listen, with satisfaction, for echoes. Here the lion and the hartebeest lay together, here the jackass became a unicorn.

If someone sends you a love letter you've got to answer back.

A book is a loaded gun.