Reading is the last act of secular prayer.

What I really like to learn how to do is to build sentences that are equal to mental states.

When you're sure of what you're looking at, look harder.

Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind.

All we can ever do is lay a word in the hands of those who have put one in ours.

The job of taste was to thin the insane torrent of human creativity down to manageable levels. But the job of appetite was never to be happy with taste.

I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works, but each one launches another. Every constraint, even dullness, frees up a new design.

I'd like, each time out as a writer, to reinvent who I am and what I'm doing. That's one of the great pleasures and rewards of the occupation.

I would say the flip side to my fascination with systems is a fascination with components. So many of my books are dialogues between little and big.

The use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body.

Maybe happiness is like a virus. Maybe it's one of those bugs that sits for a long time, so we don't even know that we are infected.

Successful people got to where they did because they did something, and all successful endeavors exist because of those who acted.

There was a silence. Elliot was surprised, because he would have thought the sound of every atom in his body exploding with indignation might make some noise.

Working on Shakespeare and learning about Shakespeare was the big takeaway for me.

Do you have a problem? I have a gun. I'll shoot you. No problem.

Every newspaper editor owes tribute to the devil. [Fr., Tout faiseur de journaux doit tribut au Malin.]

None of our republics would be anything if we weren't all together; but we have to create our own history - history of United Yugoslavia, also in the future.

I want to be challenged I want to work and I want to feel that I am not being held back that there is something in front of me something more inspiring than just eating breakfast you know.

Baseball is meant to be a contemplative game. They play music to draw young people to the game. If young people can't come to the game without music, then they should stay home.

There is a very important distinction between a critical attitude of mind (or critical faculty) and a sceptical attitude.

So much of who we are is where we have been.