“Never worry about being obsessive. I like obsessive people. Obsessive people make great art.”

“Read a lot. Expect something big, something exalting or deepening from a book. No book is worth reading that isn’t worth re-reading.”

“[T]o read was precisely to enter another world, which was not the reader’s own, and come back refreshed, ready to bear with equanimity the injustices and frustrations of this one. Reading was balm, amusement — not incitement.”

“Nothing is mysterious, no human relation. Except love.”