“The ability to read becomes devalued when what one has learned to read adds nothing of importance to one's life.”

“When reading, writing and translating, it is important to have a way of keeping track of what you have absorbed and learned, so that you can build on it and acquire richer resources for the future. When reading, read actively and critically.”

“In living, one learns how to read. (How, and with what result.)”

“Reading the Socratic dialogues one has the feeling: what a frightful waste of time! What's the point of these arguments that prove nothing and clarify nothing?”

“The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning.”

“Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.”

“When reading, writing and translating, it is important to have a way of keeping track of what you have absorbed and learned, so that you can build on it and acquire richer resources for the future. When reading, read actively and critically. Jot down interesting expressions, forceful adjectives, little turns of phrase, that strike you as effective, as things you might one day be able to use yourself—in both languages.”

“It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book become one of a million different books…”

“I am a man without many pleasures in life, a man whose few pleasures are small, but a man whose small pleasures are very important to him. One of them is eating. One reading. Another eating while reading.”

“If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one's chances of survival increase with each book one reads.”