“THE BODYofBENJAMIN FRANKLINPrinterlike the cover of an old book,its contents torn out,and stripped of its lettering and gilding lies here, food for worms;Yet the work itself shall not be lost,For it will (as he believed) appear once more,in a new,and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended By The AUTHOR”

“He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its odor, its form, its title. What he loved in a manuscript was its old illegible date, the bizarre and strange Gothic characters, the heavy gilding which loaded its drawings. It was its pages covered with dust — dust of which he breathed the sweet and tender perfume with delight.”

“Let Pascal say that man is a thinking reed. He is wrong; man is a thinking erratum. Each period in life is a new edition that corrects the preceding one and that in turn will be corrected by the next, until publication of the definitive edition, which the publisher donates to the worms.”

“People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you'd believe.”

“They think they know the book by its cover, but the book knows what it is. Now he knew better; if the book never opens up and comes out, it can be warped to fit the image others see.. . .No, a book wasn't invulnerable to the appearance of its cover, not by any means.”

“A book is much more than a delivery vehicle for its contents.”