“He was described as the literary leader of the age, but had never written a book that sold more than three thousand copies.”

“Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone.”

“But once an original book has been written-and no more than one or two appear in a century-men of letters imitate it, in other words, they copy it so that hundreds of thousands of books are published on exactly the same theme, with slightly different titles and modified phraseology. This should be able to be achieved by apes, who are essentially imitators, provided, of course, that they are able to make use of language.”

“I asked my publisher what would happen if he sold all the copies of my book he'd printed. He said "I'll just print another ten.”

“The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds”

“The text contains no literary criticism. I wanted to describe books, not to be clever at their expense.”