“I think the title page I drew for Salomé was after all "impossible". You see booksellers couldn't stick it up in their windows.”

“I wanted to pull down a book, open it proper, and gobble up page after page”

“When I type a title page, I hold it and I look at it and I think, I just need four thousand sentences to go with this and I’ll have a book.”

“Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.”

“I think winning the batting championship again (he won the title in 1961) would be my biggest thrill. I put it above the Most Valuable Player award. After all, hundreds of players are trying for the title. If I win, that means I'm best. It also means the first championship I won was no fluke. A lot of people like to say it was. I believe I stand a good chance of winning this year if my weight holds up. Right now I think it will.”

“Some books I buy for their title, others for brevity. I love short books - the way you know from the first page that it's going to end.”

“without you, dearest dearest I couldn't see or hear or feel or think - or live - I love you so and I'm never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night.”

“It felt good to be surrounded by books, by all this solid knowledge, by these objects that could be ripped page by page but couldn't be torn if the pages all held together.”

“I am saying: I see a flame thrower. I think the flame thrower guy wins in the stick fight.”

“Mrs. O' Leary is my pet. I couldn't let you stick a sword in her rump, now, could I? That might've scared her.”