“If you are anything like me --- Clever, fond of goat cheese, and devilishly handsome --- then you have undoubtedly read many books.”

“Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”

“Cecil Forrester was heir to many misfortunes, being handsome, rich, high-born, and clever.”

“The devil gave me a look which made me profoundly uneasy. 'Just because I am enjoying your sympathy, don't imagine that I cannot read you like a book,' he said. 'You think you are cleverer than I; it is a very common academic delusion.”

“You write a book like that that you're fond of over the years, then you see that happen to it, it's like pissing in your father's beer.”

“Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way.”

“There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere.”

“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.”

“Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if they open it and read it, they don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read.”

“It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you can't do anything else, read all that you can.”