“It struck me that the chief obstacle to marital contentment was this perpetual gulf between the well-founded, commendable pessimism of women and the sheer dumb animal optimism of men, the latter a force more than any other responsible for the lamentable state of the world.”

“For me the act of marriage has proven, like most of the other disastrous acts of my life, little more than a hedge against any future lack of good material.”

“There's nothing more embarrassing than to have earned the disfavor of a perceptive animal.”

“Take care-there is no force more powerful than that of an unbridled imagination.”

“Although in the past I had seen a few exchanges of genuine affection between them, the Warshaw men were awkward and ill at ease with each other.”

“Yet entertainment--as I define it, pleasure and all--remains the only sure means we have of bridging, or at least of feeling as if we have bridged, the gulf of consciousness that separates each of us from everybody else. The best response to those who would cheapen and exploit it is not to disparage or repudiate but to reclaim entertainment as a job fit for artists and for audiences, a two-way exchange of attention, experience, and the universal hunger for connection.”

“People with Books. What, in 2007, could be more incongruous than that? It makes me want to laugh."[Afterword]”