“Two people making love, she once said, are like one drowned person resuscitating the other.”

“A book is meant not only to be read, but to haunt you, to importune you like a lover or a parent, to be in your teeth like a piece of gristle.”

“Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.”

“The thought of people reading in the sun, on a beach, tempts me to recommend dark books, written in the shadow of loneliness, despair, and death. Let these revelers feel a chill as they loll on their towels.”

“The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait."(About Books; Recoiling, Rereading, Retelling, New York Times, February 22, 1987)”

“A good book is never exhausted. It goes on whispering to you from the wall. Books perfume and give weight to a room. A bookcase is as good as a view, as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms, fogs, zephyrs. I read about a family whose apartment consists of a series of spaces so strictly planned that they are obliged to give away their books as soon as they've read them. I think they have misunderstood the way books work. Reading a book is only the first step in the relationship. After you've finished it, the book enters on its real career. It stand there as a badge, a blackmailer, a monument, a scar. It's both a flaw in the room, like a crack in the plaster, and a decoration. The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait. - in "About books; recoiling, rereading, retelling", The New York Times, February 22, 1987”

“There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience. ”