The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it.

When I want to read a novel, I write one.

We cannot learn men from books.

I could read the great books but the great books don't interest me.

All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.

I read a lot. I always have, but in those two years I gorged myself on books with a voluptuous, almost erotic gluttony. I would go to the local library and take out as many as I could, and then lock myself in the bedsit and read solidly for a week. I went for old books, the older the better--Tolstoy, Poe, Jacobean tragedies, a dusty translation of Laclos--so that when I finally resurfaced, blinking and dazzled, it took me days to stop thinking in their cool, polished, crystalline rhythms.