I enjoyed learning the poems, but I didn't understand of what use they might possibly be. ‘They'll keep you company on the day you have no books to read,' my teacher said.

Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.

Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.

The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned.

Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge.

I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days.

I always knew that I wanted to live with books, even as a child, because we traveled a lot. Home was the book to which I came back every evening.

Every library is a library of preferences, and every chosen category implies an exclusion.

If justice takes place, there may be hope, even in the face of a seemingly capricious divinity.

Unicorns, dragons, witches may be creatures conjured up in dreams, but on the page their needs, joys, anguishes, and redemptions should be just as true as those of Madame Bovary or Martin Chuzzlewit.

One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.

There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

He has the finest, fundamentally sound golf swing I've ever seen.

We're actually making stuff in America now. We're exporting stuff. We're inventing things.

Donkeys have the courage to bray after the death of a lion. (not meant to glorify carnivorous practice).

I think I am aggressive, I think I am critical when it's necessary.

If you were born to be a nail, you had to be hammered.

Baseball needs to put the steroids era behind it by having and enforcing tough rules against all kinds of artificial advantages, so that spring can return.

Tis on the living Envy feeds. She silent grows When, after death, man's honor is his guard. So I, when on the pyre consumed I lie, Shall live, for all that's noblest will survive.

Everyone has a right to change their consciousness, but ultimately the whole process is misleading.

the seat of the greatest patriotic loyalties is in the stomach. Long after giving up all attachment to the land of his birth, the naturalized American citizen holds fast to the food of his parents.