“...I happen to be the kind of author who in starting to work on a book has no purpose than to get rid of that book....”

“So I stood around that big square of books. Standing around books, even books in a foreign language, you feel a kind of electricity buzzing up toward you, Your Excellency. It just happens, the way you get erect around girls wearing tight jeans."Except here what happens is that your brain starts to hum.”

“It is impossible to get rid of a book, once I take a look inside.”

“There is a simple rule: practice a kind of generous selfishness. Give a book to a friend, but don't lend it, because you will never get it back. ~ James Wood, author of The Book Against God.”

“(about organizing books in his home library, and putting a book in the "Arts and Lit non-fiction section)I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey.”

“We have no time to waste on insignificant books, hollow books, books that are there to please...We want books that cost their authors a great deal, books where you can feel the years of work, the backache, the writer's block, the author's panic at the thought that he might be lost: his discouragement, his courage, his anguish, his stubbornness, the risk of failure that he has taken.”