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He thought of trying to explain something he had recently noticed about himself: that if anyone insulted him, or one of his friends, he didn't really ...more

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

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how weird it would be to have around you only as many books as you have time to read in the rest of your life. And I remain deeply attached to the phy...more

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Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well at the same time.

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Of course, there were other sorts of literature -- theoretical, self-referencial, lachrymosely autobiographical -- but they were just dry wanks.

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It's the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of fa...more

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

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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...more

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Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised ...more

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

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What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its p...more

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I didn't doubt for a moment that she had read them all, or that they were the right books to own. Further, they seemed to be an organic combination of...more

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This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff of Literature? At best, the...more

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Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotion...more