Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.

To make [reading] into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it.

It is, unfortunately, easier to lose a lover than complete In Search of Lost Time.

How comforting to witness a fictional person (who is also, miraculously, ourselves as we read) suffering the same agonies of a saccharine dismissal and, importantly, surviving.

To make [reading] into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it.Even the finest books deserve to be thrown aside.

How mean to buy only as many books as one will actually have time to read.