“To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.”

“The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.”

“...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.”

“Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader's imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.”

“It was the kind of libraryhe had only read about in books.”

“One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.”

“She‘d never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people.”