“If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that.”

“I am more optimistic, both about reading and about books. There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers – there always were. Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.”

“It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.”

“..books look as if they contain knowledge, while e-readers look as if they contain information.”

“Look, writers aren't perfect, I want to cry, any more than husbands and wives are perfect. The only unfailing rule is, If they seem so, they can't be.”

“The companionship of dead writers is a wonderful form of live friendship.”

“The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.”