“Reading is perception as translation. The inert signs of an alphabet become living meanings in the mind.”

“I've come to think of consciousness as a continuum of states, from fully awake cogitation to daydreaming to the altered consciousness of hallucinations and dreams. Still, interpreting dreams can only take place when we're awake. I believe meaning is what the mind makes and wants. It's essential to perception and to consciousness in all its forms. But the important meanings of psychotherapy are subjective. There's a lot of research that confirms that drem content reflects the dreamer's emotional conflicts.”

“We read each other through our eyes, and anatomically they are an extension of our brains. When we catch someone's eye, we look into a mind.”

“A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is a love story like any other.”

“Reading is a private pursuit; one that takes place behind closed doors.”

“It seems to me that going backward sometimes means going forward.”

“Lots of women read fiction. Most men don't. Women read fiction written by women and by men. Most men don't. If a man opens a novel,. he likes to have a masculine name on the cover; it's reassuring somehow. You never know what might happen to that external genitalia if you immerse yourself in imaginary doings concocted by someone with the goods on the inside.”