I realize that people still read books now and some people actually love them, but in 1946 in the Village our feelings about books–I’m talking about my friends and myself–went beyond love. It was as...

Two people making love, she once said, are like one drowned person resuscitating the other.

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.

For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his...

When we were in bed, the only part of me she touched was my penis, because it was the most detached.

The contents of someone’s bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.”(About Books; Recoiling, Rereading, Retelling, New York Times, February 22, 1987)