Day, after day, after glorious day, I was falling in love with books.

The novel's not organized like a screenplay. If you shot the novel, you'd have a twelve-hour movie.

I'm not anyone, I'm just myself; whatever I am, I am something, and now I'm something you can't help.

When rivers flooded, when fire fell from the sky, what a fine place the library was, the many rooms, the books. With luck, no one found you. How could they!--when you were off to Tanganyika in '98, Cairo in 1812, Florence in 1492!?

You've got to love libraries. You've got to love books. You've got to love poetry. You've got to love everything about literature. Then, you can pick the one thing you love most and write about it.

And they were all, when their souls grew warm, poets.

You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people's faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.