The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.

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.

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

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.

Purple prose attracts attention more than converts.

Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.

It is one thing to touch a flame and know it is hot, but quite another to jump into that flame and be consumed by it.

Your anatomy is a mystery that nobody bothers explaining to us. Even when we think we have mastered one woman's body, every body is different.

It is vital for Russia to normalize relations with the rest of the world. You shouldn't isolate your economy

So I'd be quite happy to have a three-hour Lincoln/Douglas style debate with Barack Obama. I'd let him use a teleprompter. I'll just rely on knowledge. We'll do fine.

The disturbers of our happiness, in this world, are our desires, our griefs, and our fears.

By all means, fire the customers who aren't worth the time and the trouble. But understand that the moment you insist the customer is wrong, you've just started the firing process.

I can be busy for three years and you may not even know what I'm busy doing because you only see me in a few scenes here or there, but I've been working my tail off because there's just not a lot.

Pity would be no more, If we did not make somebody poor. Mercy no more could be, If all were happy as we.