“I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.”

“I learned about religion the way most children learned about sex, [in the schoolyard]. . . . They terrified me by telling me there was a dead man in the sky watching everything I did and I retaliated by explaining where babies came from. Some of their mothers phoned mine to complain, though I think I was more upset than they were: they didn't believe me but I believed them.”

“I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.”

“I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.”

“I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.”

“And yet it disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.”

“Nor did I make any distinctions between great literature and any other kind. I just liked reading.”