Books read in a public library never have the same flavour as books read in the attic or the kitchen. - Alberto Manguel

I know that something dies when i give up my books, and that my memory keeps going back to them with mournful nostalgia.

The listeners who buy books after a reading multiply that reading; the author who realizes that he or she may be writing on a blank page but is at least not speaking to a blank wall may be encouraged by the experience, and write more.

Most readers, then and now, have at some time experienced the humiliation of being told that their occupation is reprehensible.