There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs. – Henry Ward Beecher

If the book is second-hand, I leave all its markings intact, the spoor of previous readers, fellow-travellers who have recorded their passage by means of scribbled comments, a name on the fly-leaf, a bus ticket to mark a certain page. – Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

A good book should leave you… slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it. – William Styron, interview, Writers at Work, 1958