Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!

And the non-reading of books, you will object, should be characteristic of all collectors? This is news to me, you may say. It is not news at all. experts will bear me out when I say that it is the oldest thing in the world. Suffice it to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to a philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, “And you have read all these books, Monsieur France?” “Not one-tenth of them. I don’t suppose you use your Sevres china every day?

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.