“Some of the best friends we have are books. Why? Well, they belong usually to our relaxed armchair hours. They come only if chosen; hence they suit the mood or the taste, whether for humor, fantasy, adventure or mystery. In a trice they can take us with them to far places and other times. Best of all, they don’t talk back or force themselves upon us, but, like patient, loving friends, wait until we give them our attention. And always, they are as near as our bookshelf when we need them.”

“We should always choose our books as God chooses our friends, just a bit beyond us, so that we have to do our level best to keep up with them.”

“We don’t give up on our patients with diabetes because they can’t be cured. Instead, we do our best to control their symptoms as best we can and try to work with them to give them the best possible quality of life.”

“We all have our moments of weakness. Even the best of us. Luckily, we have friends who keep us in line. I like to think we chose them because they're better than we are.”

“We are ever brutal to those who love and serve us in silence, but the time may come when, for our cruelty, we shall be deserted by these best friends of ours.”

“We are the people of the book. We love our books. We fill our houses with books. We treasure books we inherit from our parents, and we cherish the idea of passing those books on to our children. Indeed, how many of us started reading with a beloved book that belonged to one of our parents? We force worthy books on our friends, and we insist that they read them. We even feel a weird kinship for the people we see on buses or airplanes reading our books, the books that we claim. If anyone tries to take away our books—some oppressive government, some censor gone off the rails—we would defend them with everything that we have. We know our tribespeople when we visit their homes because every wall is lined with books. There are teetering piles of books beside the bed and on the floor; there are masses of swollen paperbacks in the bathroom. Our books are us. They are our outboard memory banks and they contain the moral, intellectual, and imaginative influences that make us the people we are today.”