Every writer hopes his or her book will be its own thing.

It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.

The heart does not go backward. Only the mind.

When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.

It was not the brutality of what occurred next that changed my mind and brought home to me the full meaning of fear. It was the brilliance of it.

The problem is simply finding the right person. Ask Plato. Just make sure she finishes your thoughts and you finish hers. That's all you need.

As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination.

...History it seemed could be something entirely different a splash of blood whose agony didn't fade overnight or over centuries.

It's funny; in this era of e-mail and voice mail and all those things that even I did not grow up with, a plain old paper letter takes on amazing intimacy.

There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence.

...what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?

Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.

Boys play with death as though it were a game, cutting their teeth on daggers.

Relax

No credit--no debt. Credit leads a man into temptation. Cash down is the only thing that will deliver him from evil.

I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.

Katczinsky says it is all to do with education - it softens the brain.

Demon, angel, all the same thing if you go back far enough, or cut deep enough.

Yes, but I did manage to increase the amount of virginity in the world by that method.

Every now and then, you get people who tend to forget what this country is about, which is a melting pot of races and cultures and freedom of speech.

Wealth comes from successful individual efforts to please one's fellow man ... that's what competition is all about: "outpleasing" your competitors to win over the consumers.