Now, 75 years [after To Kill a Mockingbird], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.

[Open Letter, O Magazine, July 2006]

The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.

People with Books. What, in 2007, could be more incongruous than that? It makes me want to laugh."

[Afterword]

Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.

I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can't really put a book on the Internet. Three companies have offered to put books by me on the Net, and I said, 'If you can make something that has a nice jacket, nice paper with that nice smell, then we'll talk.' All the computer can give you is a manuscript. People don't want to read manuscripts. They want to read books. Books smell good. They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.