“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 managed not to finish certain books. With barely a twinge of conscience, I hurl down what bores me or doesn't give what I crave: ecstasy, transcendence, a thrill of mysterious connection. For, more than anything else, readers are thrill-seekers, though I don't read thrillers, not the kind sold under that label, anyway. They don't thrill; only language thrills.”

“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.”

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

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