“The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers. ”

“We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure.”

“Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.”

“Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.”

“If we read the Western Canon in order to form our social, political, or personal moral values, I firmly believe we will become monsters of selfishness and exploitation.”

“I am naive enough to read incessantly because I cannot, on my own, get to know enough people profoundly enough.”

“One measures oncoming old age by its deepening of Proust, and its deepening by Proust. How to read a novel? Lovingly, if it shows itself capable of accomodating one's love; and jealously, because it can become the image of one's limitations in time and space, and yet can give the Proustian blessing of more life.”