“I don't see how you can go too far, in the right direction”

“Too much of the world was inhospitable, intractable... Why prove that it had ever once been green?”

“There are some writers who wrote too much. There are others who wrote enough. There are yet others who wrote nothing like enough to satisfy their admirers, and Jane Austen is certainly one of these.”

“His chief failing was a habit of cracking heavy pedantic jokes; he was unable to let a good idea drop, and remarked several times during the course of the film that the heroine looked like she ought to be playing the horse. The comment had some truth in it, in that the heroine did have an equine cast of feature, but he made it too often, and with too little variation; however, she was willing to forgive him, in view of his evident tolerance of her social errors, such as an inability to say whether or not she wanted an ice cream.”

“What really annoys me are the ones who write to say, I am doing your book for my final examinations and could you please tell me what the meaning of it is. I find it just so staggering--that you're supposed to explain the meaning of your book to some total stranger! If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.”

“Because if one has an image, however dim and romantic, of a journey's end, one may, in the end, surely reach it, after no matter how many detours and deceptions and abandonings of hope. And hope could never have been entirely abandoned, even in the worst days.”

“I need words and print... I need print like an addict. I could live without it, perhaps. But I hope I never have to try.”