“Sometimes I think the cover of a book as a door to another world...but other times I think of it as an escape hatch from this one. I guess it's the same thing.”

“Sometimes I think of myself as a little bee. I go from one area of the studio to another and gather pollen and sort of stimulate everybody. I guess that’s the job I do.”

“I think one remains the same person throughout, merely passing, as it were, i these lapses of time from one room to another, but all in the same house.”

“I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t. It’s the great mystery.”

“By now, I probably preferred secondhand books to new ones. In America such items were disparagingly referred to as “previously owned”; but this very continuity of ownership was part of their charm. A book dispensed its explanation of the world to one person, then another, and so on down the generations; different hands held the same book and drew sometimes the same, sometimes a different wisdom from it.”

“I guess it's just another one of life's little mysteries.""I'm tired of mysteries.""Yeah? I think they add a kind of zest to the world. Like salt in a stew.”