“I think most serious and omnivorous readers are alike- intense in their dedication to the word, quiet-minded, but relieved and eagerly talkative when they meet other readers and kindred spirits.”

“I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.”

“Poem in other words may or may not result from inspiration but must (in reader and author alike) produce it--”

“The House Was Quiet and the World Was CalmThe house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm. The words were spoken as if there was no book, Except that the reader leaned above the page, Wanted to lean, wanted much to be The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom The summer night is like a perfection of thought. The house was quiet because it had to be. The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind: The access of perfection to the page. And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world, In which there is no other meaning, itself Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself Is the reader leaning late and reading there.”

“I believe that you meet people who are vital to your transformation only when the conditions are right, when the tenacious concerns of the unconscious break into awareness. Then such kindred spirits are drawn to each other like iron shavings to a magnet.”

“That'd be just what I need: a rash of car thefts across America, committed by dedicated readers.”