“A novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed.”

“There is a kind of magicness about going far away and then coming back all changed.”

“What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience.”

“Reading is, at its best, not an escape; it is genuine experience. A novel is not a monologue, but a conversation, a collaboration between writer and reader, an invaluable exchange of human conditions.”

“In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little... But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.”

“The first step to Happiness is deciding exactly what kind of life you want. That kinda comes from experience.”