“Books don’t have a nutritional value. Which is to say, we don’t just read "good" books because they’re good for us. We read to expand our horizons, to understand and connect with something outside ourselves, good and bad. We read to challenge ourselves…”

“There is indeed a heaven on this earth, a heaven which we inhabit when we read a good book.”

“Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.”

“A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.”

“A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.”

“Indian reviewers don’t read books. They have two days to produce 800 words. They read the prologue and then skim a few pages, then they read all the other reviews. If the first two are negative, you can be sure they will all be negative. If the first two are good, the rest will be good. It’s that low-level, that pathetic. It takes a kind of confidence for a reviewer to have their own opinion about a book. And a lot of people here just don’t care about literary novels.”

“In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own.”

“It is a general observation that people write as they read. As a rule, careful writers are careful readers and vice versa. A careful writer wants to be read carefully. He cannot know what it means to be read carefully but by having done careful reading himself. Reading precedes writing. We read before we write. We learn to write by reading. A man learns to write well by reading well good books, by reading most carefully books which are most carefully written.”

“There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.”

“We don’t drift in good directions. We discipline and prioritize ourselves there.”