“I must confess to generally hating sections entitled “how to read this book” and soon. I feel that, if I bought it, I should be able to read it any way I damn well please!Nevertheless, I feel some guidelines may be useful.”

“I hate requests. They make me feel unhappy. It's like when I take a book out of the library. As soon as I start to read it, all I can think about is when I'll finish it.”

“I don't have a poetry section in the bookshop.(Don't have but should have, I have begun to think. The poetry, like everything else, is scattered thematically in a generally successful attempt to encourage punters to walk the circle, reading shelves which, if more conventionally arranged, they might feel happy to skip. But poetry - unlike fiction, biography, drama, history - continues to be generically in demand. It's not a question, as I used to assume, of no one reading poetry; more a matter of people who read poetry liking little else. They need a Section.)”

“I read all of those books I always wanted to read, or reread... And I feel full. Until I finish a book. Then I feel a certain desperation to start a new one. To have company.”

“Lately, I feel like my life is a book written in a language I don't know how to read.”

“I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become smarter.”