“Socrates called himself a midwife of ideas. A great book is often such a midwife, delivering to full existence what has been coiled like an embryo in the dark, silent depths of the brain.”

“Books act like a developing fluid on film. That is, they bring into consciousness what you didn’t know you knew.”

“When you re-read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than there was before.”

“As for those who think they don't like to read, well, I know they're making a mistake, just as all of us do when we try to judge ourselves. Now is the time to give reading a chance, for if you don't get the habit when you're young you may never get it. And if you don't get it, you may grow up to be just as dull as most adults are.”

“[Wine is] poetry in a bottle.”

“Don't be afraid of poetry.”

“The kind of poetry to avoid in the pretty-pretty kind that pleased our grandmothers, the kind that Longfellow and Tennyson, good poets at their best, wrote at their worst.”