Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

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.

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.

The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.

One colossal advantage of being in extra innings is that you can tell it like it is, say what you think, and largely eschew political caution.

Nothing is indifferent, nothing is powerless in the universe; an atom might destroy everything, an atom might save everything!

I've always felt more at home in the UK than in France.

God made me and broke the mold.

You know sometimes I just want to curl up on stage and lie there for a while - it's weird.

The illusion of magic is an idealistic fantasy; it exists only in the imagination of the spectator.

I can sort of will that stuff to happen to me if I put myself in the right headspace. Then I can actually get to a space where it won't just be one song that comes through, but a series of them.

The rats are underneath the piles/ The Jew is underneath the lot.

If we greet situations with a positive attitude, we will eventually create positive returns. If we respond with a negative attitude, negative things will eventually come our way.