“When I am near the end of a book, I have to sleep in the same room with it.”

“Another thing I need to do, when I'm near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it...Somehow the book doesn't leave you when you're asleep right next to it.”

“Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has to the book I am reading.”

“At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I'd end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat empty.”

“I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.”

“I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.”