We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves. – E.M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy, 1951
I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family and violates my, or any, sense of right and wrong. I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public, whom I promised better. – Eliot Spitzer
I was influenced by surrealist poetry and painting as were thousands of other people, and it seems to me to have become a part of the way I write, but its not. – Kenneth Koch
