Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time.

When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape – into different countries, mores, speech patterns – but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life’s subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic.

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.

..books look as if they contain knowledge, while e-readers look as if they contain information.

To own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself.

Me and my books, in the same apartment: like a gherkin in its vinegar.

My reading might be pointless in terms of the history of literary criticism; but it's not pointless in terms of pleasure.