Reading is like sauce-making: one does not remember the books so much as become infused with them.
Mar 082016
Reading
The dead alive and busy.
—Vaughan
Jan 212016
We seem almost naturally to revere books, for which reading them is the only cure.
Jan 052016
If it can be translated, it’s not literature.
Sep 302015
To read well is to let the book read you.
Sep 282015
He who can, writes books; he who cannot, writes books for children.
Sep 232015
I ask one thing of literature: that it draw blood.
Sep 212015
The punster, the grammarian, the nitpicking fact-checker all display contempt for what is being said. They counterfeit attention.
Jul 132015
The to-read list is a stack, not a queue.
Jul 092015
The tragedy of human intercourse is that people’s two grand passions — their own health and their own children — interest no one else.
Jul 022015
Three qualities distinguish phony erudition: it’s all recent, it’s all humanities, and it’s all in one language.