“Max had once read in one of his father's books that some childhood images become engraved in the mind like photographs, like scenes you can return to again and again and will always remember, no matter how much time goes by.”

“Like some dogs: kick them once and they never trust you again, no matter how nice you are to them.”

“Owing to the flood of shallow books which really are exhausted in one reading, the modern mind tends to think every book is the same, finished in one reading. But it is not so. And gradually the modern mind will realize it again. The real joy of a book lies in reading it over and over again, and always finding something different, coming upon another meaning, another level of meaning. It is, as usual, a question of values: we are so overwhelmed with quantities of books, that we hardly realize any more that a book can be valuable, valuable like a jewel, or a lovely picture, into which you can look deeper and deeper and get a more profound experience very time. It is far, far better to read one book six times, at intervals, than to read six several books.”

“Life is like a book son. And every book has an end. No matter how much you like that book you will get to the last page and it will end. No book is complete without its end. And once you get there, only when you read the last words, will you see how good the book is.”

“Some books are so familiar that reading them is like being home again.”

“It is one thing to be a man's wife - quite another to be the mother of his children. In fact, once you become a mother, being a wife seems like a game you once played or a self-help book you were overly impressed with as a teenager that on second reading is puffy with common ideas. This was one of the many things I had learned since crossing over into the middle place - that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap.”