Reading well makes children more interesting both to themselves and others, a process in which they will develop a sense of being separate and distinct selves.

Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.

The most beautiful prose paragraph yet written by any American.

We read, frequently if not unknowingly, in search of a mind more original than our own.

I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike

It is hard to go on living without some hope of encountering the extraordinary.

Shakespeare is the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are represented by him on the stage.

At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy.

Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.

Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.

The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers.

The uglier the storm the lovelier the rainbow.

Rough palms cradled my face while my fingers gripped the pillow on either side of his. Lips, teeth, tongue, mingled together. I ate him up and didn’t let go until I had to come up for air.

Focusing on worldly achievements and acceptance has never been the way to true happiness, and an obsessive, discontent with our physical appearance can lead to unhappiness if not despair.

I felt people responded to two things. One, obviously, is the gore and the scenes like the eye gauging.

A functionary, when he really is nothing more than a functionary, is really a very dangerous gentleman.

I have absolutely no doubt that there is an intense anti-Americanism in all Western Europe, and I think the reason for that is a very, very simple one.

Probably I'll not be so successful if I will keep everything in myself inside of me.

I'm someone who is open-minded to new experiences because they teach you new things.

Growing up as a mixed-race kid myself, when you are in the middle of it and you're young...you don't think about it consciously. It's your reality.

We are reassured almost as foolishly as we are alarmed; human nature is so constituted.