“There are some who go through life with a shadow hanging over them, particularly if they live in a building which has long wide awnings.”

“Will this long presidency of George W. Bush ever be over?Living through it is starting to seem like some ghastly, upsettingnovel in which the hero is the country, and the president is thisdisturbing, pig-headed, oblivious villain who makes things worseand worse and worse.”

“As with men, it has always seemed to me that books have their own peculiar destinies. They go towards the people who are waiting for them and reach them at the right moment. They are made of living material and continue to cast light through the darkness long after the death of their authors.”

“Things men have made with wakened hands, and put soft life intoare awake through years with transferred touch, and go on glowingfor long years.And for this reason, some old things are lovelywarm still with the life of forgotten men who made them.”

“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

“I have walked through many lives,some of them my own,and I am not who I was,though some principle of beingabides, from which I strugglenot to stray.”