When all else fails, give up and go to the library.
On some shelf in some hexagon, it was argued, there must exist a book that is the cipher and perfect compendium of all other books, and some librarian must have examined that book; this librarian is analogous to a god.
He had given her the book when it came out, hoping that the poem would tell her what he hadn’t dared to say.
In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.
He would also declare that of the many kinds of pleasure literature can minister, the highest is the pleasure of the imagination.
My advice is this. When you are young and you read something that you very much dislike, put it aside and read it again three years later.
They sat around, reading the book themselves, listening to me read the book, and a kind of paradise was regained.
There is no friend as loyal as a book.
I like books whose virtue is all drawn together in a page or two. I like sentences that don't budge though armies cross them.