“Un libro es una máquina para fabricar sueños. Está hecho para sacarte de este mundo.”

“Quiere ser incluso más breve. Quiere ser una sola palabra. Si pudiera encontrar dicha palabra, si pudiera pronunciar dicha sílaba, el universo entero se desprendería de ella con un rugido. Esa es la indignante ambición del cuento, su fe más profunda, la grandeza de su pequeñez.”

“Others saw in the trend still another instance of a disturbing tendency in the American suburb: the longing for withdrawal, for self-enclosure, for expensive isolation.”

“God pity the poor novelist.”

“So imagine a fire going -- wood snapping the way it does when it’s a little green — the wind rattling the windows behind the curtains -- and one of those Chopin melodies that feel like sorrow and ecstasy all mixed together pouring from the keys -- and you have my idea of happiness. Or just reading, reading and lamplight, the sound of pages turning. And so you dare to be happy. You do that thing. You dare.”

“All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal.”

“His ambition was to insert his dreams into the world, and if they were the wrong dreams, then he would dream them in solitude.”