Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?

It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.

If our DNA has a literary equivalent, it's Finnegan's Wake.

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

Strange, isn’t it? To love a book. When the words on the pages become so precious that they feel like part of your own history because they are. It’s nice to finally have someone read stories I know so intimately.

Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.

No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books.

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.

Reading a book by someone you respect allows some of their brilliance to rub off on you.

Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you've finished just to stay near it.

It's one of the uncanniest things I know to watch a real book on its career — it follows you and follows you and drives you into a corner and makes you read it.

Some books are so familiar that reading them is like being home again.

You know at once, if you are clairvoyant in these matters (libre-voyant, one might say), when you have met your book. You may dally and evade, you may go on about your affairs, but the paragraph of prose your eye fell upon, or the snatch of verses, or perhaps only the spirit and flavour of the volume, more divined than reasonably noted, will follow you.

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.