“The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.”

“I’m reminded of a book my father used to read me,” she said. “A bunch of elves and things get into a huge war over a piece of jewelry that everybody wants but nobody can wear.”

“Chomsky's writings are "classics" in Mark Twain's sense: something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”

“Nobody reads a book to get to the middle.”

“Funny how nobody talks on the tubes, isn't it? I rarely catch the tube myself, or lifts. Confined spaces, everybody shuts down. Why is that? Perhaps we think everybody on the tube is a potential psychopath or a drunk,so we close down and pretend to read a book or something.”

“He was someone whom everyone admired and liked but whom nobody knew. He was like a book that you could feel good holding, that you could talk about without ever having read, that you could recommend.”