“Parables, yes. We here are to lead life with woe. Tasting bitter.”

“In books I found explicitly, flamboyantly, everything censored in life.”

“Reading. Reading was the stable backdrop against which my life was played.”

“How are we to spend our lives, anyway? That is the real question. We read to seek the answer, and the search itself--the task of a lifetime--becomes the answer.”

“I have done what people do, my life makes a reasonable showing. Can I go back to my books now?”

“Among some tossed-out books of my daughter's which I rescued...was one too awful to live. I returned it to the trash, resisting the urge to say a few parting words. All day long the thought of its mingling with chicken bones and olive pits nagged at me. Half a dozen times I removed it and replaced it, like an executioner with scruples about capital punishment. Finally I put it on a high shelf where I wouldn't have to see it. Life imprisonment.”

“My head aches, my eyes burn, my arms and legs have given up, and my face in the mirror has a grayish cast. The bed, across the room, calls in its unmistakable lover's croon, Come to me, come, only I can make you truly happy, oh, how happy I'll make you, don't resist, remember how you moan with pleasure the instant we touch.....”