The press is a group confessional form that provides communal participation. The book is a private confessional form that provides a “point of view.” (p. 204)

The writing of this book serves as a kind of confession. You, the readers, will be my confidants. I’m going to tell you all my secrets. Things I’ve never told anybody. Things I don’t want anybody to know! I don’t want you to breathe a word of what you find out in this book. Keep everything under your hat! Wait a minute, wait a minute…that might not work. I’m not in a confessional booth, and a lot of you are probably not priests. This is a book!

A book is as private and consensual as sex.

There is something very intimate and personal about one's books. They reveal so much of one's private soul.

It takes, unhappily, no more than a desk and writing supplies to turn any room into a confessional.

Books are the best means — private, discreet, reliable — of overcoming reality.

I think we should always remember that reading — the experience of a book — is a very private, very personal kind of thing. Sometimes the best response to such an experience is: silence.

I’m beginning now even to see it in my own books which are written from many different points of view, very different personae, first person as a man, a child, a woman, a young person, an older person, there is the sense, looking back, that you are really writing one book all your life. Because there is this voyage of discovery of life.

"Bless me, readers, for I have published. It's been five years since my last book. Greetings, fellow sinners! If you picked up a copy of this book, it means you are either: 1) wracked with guilt and are looking for penance, or 2) need to spend over $10.00 at the airport newsstand so you can use your credit card. Either way, welcome to Stephen Colbert's Midnight Confessions.

As America's foremost TV Catholic, it was natural for me to do a segment inspired by the church. After all, the Catholic Church and late night TV actually have a lot in common: our shows last about an hour, we're obsessed with reaching younger demographics, and the hosts are almost always men. This religious-adjacent tome contains all my favorite confessions from The Late Show. These are things that aren't necessarily sins, but I do feel guilty about them. For instance, repackaging material from the show and selling it in a book.

I've always been a big fan of confession. The confessional is a great place to go to relieve yourself of your sins. Unless you're claustrophobic, in which case it's a suffocating death trap of despair!

And while most confession books just give you run-of-the-mill mortal sins, I go one step further and provide you with mortal sins, venial sins, deadly sins, and even sins of omission (Notice that the previous sentence didn't have a period!)

This book is a throwback to a simpler life when people would go to a priest to confess their sins. As opposed to how it's done now - getting drunk and weeping to Andy Cohen on Bravo.

Confessing your sins is a great way to get things off your chest. Second only to waxing.

The only downside is that you get introduced to it as a kid, before you have any juicy sins to confess. Oh, you stole a cookie? That's adorable, Becky. Come back when you total your dad's Chevy.

Now you might be asking yourself, "What if I'm not Catholic - can I still enjoy this book?" Of course. After all, no matter what religion you are - be it Jewish, Muslim,

Our opinions of the world, are confessions of character.

Indeed, a book is a path of words which takes the heart in new directions.

Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.

Books are sepulchres of thought.

A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy.