“What sense of superiority it gives one to escape reading some book which every one else is reading.”

“If I can get on to my sofa and occupy myself for four hours, at intervals through the day, scribbling my notes, and able to read the books that belong to me, in that they clarify the density, and shape the formless mass within, life seems inconceivably rich...”

“One has a greater sense of intellectual degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience.”

“The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. ”

“He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one I had never read before, one that surprised me with all it had to say.”

“Who would ever give up the reality of dreams for relative knowledge?”

“The women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription.”