“Back at home they drew the curtains and read, with disapproval, with relish, with avidity and glee - even the ones who'd never thought of opening a novel before. There's nothing like a shovelful of dirt to encourage literacy.”

“There's nothing like a shovel full of dirt to encourage literacy.”

“It’s always encouraging to be told that it is intellectually acceptable to read the sorts of things that you like to read anyway.”

“Here is a handfulof shadow I have brought back to you:this decay, this hope, this mouth-ful of dirt, this poetry.”

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”

“Once in a while, though, he went on binges. He would sneak into bookstores or libraries, lurk around the racks where the little magazines were kept; sometimes he'd buy one. Dead poets were his business, living ones his vice. Much of the stuff he read was crap and he knew it; still, it gave him an odd lift. Then there would be the occasional real poem, and he would catch his breath. Nothing else could drop him through space like that, then catch him; nothing else could peel him open.”

“The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others.”