“The Cavaliere has retired to his study and reads, trying not to think about what is going on around him -- one of the principal uses of a book.”

“Read a lot. Expect something big, something exalting or deepening from a book. No book is worth reading that isn't worth re-reading.”

“One cannot use the life to interpret the work. But One can use the work to interpret the life.”

“A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world."[Speech upon being awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Peace Prize of the German Book Trade), Frankfurt Book Fair, October 12, 2003]”

“[T]o read was precisely to enter another world, which was not the reader's own, and come back refreshed, ready to bear with equanimity the injustices and frustrations of this one. Reading was balm, amusement -- not incitement.”

“A novel worth reading is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility, of what human nature is, of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness.”

“One can know worlds one has not experienced, choose a response to life that has never been offered, create an inwardness utterly strong and fruitful.”