Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm nothing if not a literary hedonist.
Science fiction is, after all, the art of extrapolation.
The savagery and power of Edith Wharton's ghost stories surprised me.
Writers keep writing and publishers publishing - it never grows boring.
Books don't only furnish a room: they also make the best holiday gifts.
Make sure your message is clear, yet that you are faithful to its complexity.
I'm an appreciator. I love all kinds of books, and I want others to love them, too.
I am shocked that we seemed to have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from Vietnam.
Best selling authors are always worth listening to, even if you choose to ignore their advice.
Order and surprise: these are two intertwined elements that make for any great library or collection.
The goal of a just society should be to provide satisfying work with a living wage to all its citizens.
I didn't work for any newspapers in college, never worked for any newspaper before 'The Washington Post'.
I once read that there are more biographical works about Napoleon Bonaparte than any other man in history.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that M. Dirda is a sucker for anything bookish in the way of artwork.
I'm sometimes willing to put in vast, even inordinate amounts of time if I find a project that interests me.
Books can be a source of solace, but I see them mainly as a source of pleasure, personal as well as esthetic.
Like most people, I find watching the lazy and quiet underwater realm of a big aquarium exceptionally calming.
I am something of an aficionado of thrift stores. In my youth, I regularly searched their shelves for old books.
At the age of 14, I ran away from home for four days and hitchhiked around western Pennsylvania and southern Ohio.
'The Admirable Crichton' is probably Barrie's most famous work after 'Peter Pan', nearly a pendant to that classic.
The world is a library of strange and wonderful books, and sometimes we just need to go prowling through the stacks.
Any man's death diminishes us, but when an artist passes away, we lose not just an island but an entire archipelago.
Once upon a time, I sat in my mother's lap as she turned the pages of Golden Books, and I gradually learned to read.
With concerted effort, I can follow written instructions, but don't ask me to simply grasp how to operate a smartphone.
Some travelers collect souvenirs, postcards, or bumper stickers; I bring home a pencil from the various places I visit.
I think the essence of [Kurt] Vonnegut's humanism lay in his emphasis on human kindness as, so to speak, our saving grace.
What matters are those ordinary acts of kindness and of love, not vaulting ambition with its attendant hubris and smugness.
I think of my own work as part of a decades-long conversation about books and reading with people I will mainly never meet.
I sometimes lie awake at night and try to imagine what would be the best period in history to spend one's seventy-odd years.
Mentoring is the last refuge of the older artist. With luck, disciples will keep one's books in print, one's reputation alive.
Near my desk, I keep a large plastic carton filled with fresh notebooks and stationery of various kinds, sizes, and qualities.
Since I make my living as a literary journalist, not a book scout, I spend inordinate amounts of time either reading or writing.
I suppose movie theaters are the churches of the modern age, where we gather reverently to worship the tinsel gods of Hollywood.
My wife tells me I should check out 'Downton Abbey', but I gather that series might be almost too intense for my temperate nature.
Fiction is a house with many stately mansions, but also one in which it is wise, at least sometimes, to swing from the chandeliers.
Throughout history the exemplary teacher has never been just an instructor in a subject; he is nearly always its living advertisement.
I've always liked an easygoing, colloquial style. I like the kind of reviewer who is essentially a fellow reader, an enthusiast, a fan.
Adventurous reading allows one to escape a little from the provincialities of one's home culture and the blinders of one's narrow self.
In my own case, my folks didn't actually object to comics, as many parents did, but they pretty much felt the things were a waste of time.
I long ago ran out of bookshelf space and so, like a museum with its art, simply rotate my books from the boxes to the shelves and back again.
What I enjoy about reviewing and writing for newspapers and periodicals is simply the chance to talk about all kinds of books and lots of them.
Most scholarly books we read for the information or insight they contain. But some we return to simply for the pleasure of the author's company.
From the late 19th to the early 20th century, the December issue of almost any general-interest magazine regularly featured a holiday horror or two.
Neither my mom nor my dad ever bought me any comic books. Certainly not for Christmas. I suspect that doing so would have violated the Parents' Code.
For even the ordinary well-read person, the French Enlightenment is largely restricted to the three big-name philosophes: Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire.
My gift, if that's not too grandiose a term, is one for describing novels, biographies, and works of history in such a way that people want to read them.
In truth, I'm not really a cat person. Seamus, the wonder dog, still deeply mourned by all who knew him, was just about the only pet I've ever really loved.
When I was a boy in the late 1950s, the public library refused to stock books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. They were regarded as vulgar, ill-written potboilers.
It's a sad commentary on our time - to use a phrase much favored by my late father - that people increasingly celebrate Christmas Day by going to the movies.
People sometimes think that I bring home all these old books because I'm addicted, that I'm no better than a hoarder with a houseful of crumbling newspapers.