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.

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.

I shrivel up every time someone mentions Star Wars to me.

Yes, we three were so happy, my wife, my guitar and me!

Life is one big minefield, and the only place that isn't a minefield is the place they make the mines.

This very Rome that we behold deserves our love ...: the only common and universal city.

If your environment is not to your liking, change it!

It is not necessary to move mountains in order to prove one's faith.

He who forgives readily only invites offense.

Now, I happen to be an optimist.

Leaders don't convince people to follow them. Leaders walk forward alone and those who want to go down their path decide to follow.

Cling, swing, Spring, sing, Swing up into the apple tree.