It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave.

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.

If a book is really good, it deserves to be read again, and if it's great, it should be read at least three times.

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives.

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

A bookcase is as good as a view, as much of a panorama as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms and zephyrs.

There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.

The tension between 'yes' and no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot,' makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

Giving with love is more rewarding for the giver's heart and mind than the receiver

In an easy cause any man may be eloquent.

Rock and menopause do not mix. It is not good, it sucks and every day I fight it to the death, or, at the very least, not let it take me over.

With a polite smile, I decided she was insane.

Every anxiety is a mild form of premonition, and from that point the shade deepens till we get the forebodings and hauntings that merge into lunacy.

I knew it was my time to retire, when I saw Messi running past me.

I think everyone wants for their kids the good things that they had.

Life is an egg you have to be patient and careful with it or it will break.

A warm blundering man does more for the world than a frigid wise man.

I am iron resisting the most enormous magnet there is.