“We become the books we read.”

“All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. ... But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not.”

“What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.”

“Each time we come to a book we give it a different reading because we bring a different person to it. It is not you who reads the book, the book reads you”

“We are not such fools as to pay for reading inferior books, when we can read superior books for nothing.”

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”