Reading is at the beginning of the social contract.

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.

You have to be clever in how you make money and save it, and clever in how you enjoy your life.

If you run, you better be faster than my gun. -Weasel to illegal aliens

He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence.

Sink me! Your taylors have betrayed you! T'wood serve you better to send THEM to Madam Guillotine

I think what makes compelling fiction or cinema is when you're basically taking the most intense moments of experience and you're creating a song or a narrative out of it.

In mid-life the man wants to see how irresistible he still is to younger women. How they turn their hearts to stone and more or less commit a murder of their marriage I just don't know, but they do.

If you are drilling for water, it's better to drill one 60-foot well than 10 6-foot wells.

What makes me angry? The education of children. How in God's name can you expect to have a functioning society the way we teach our kids?

The only parts left of my original body are my elbows.

We want five thousand dollars or you'll see your kid again.