To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life. – W. Somerset Maugham

Readers of novels. I sometimes think that I could, if put to it, pick the real readers of novels out of a crowd. They have a strangeness about the eye, almost as if there were an extra bit of lens on the cornea…. The glance of a reader shows me a soul with a different orientation to time… – Sven Birkerts (b.1951), “Notes from a Confession,” The Agni Review, No.22 (1985)

A book is to me like a hat or coat — a very uncomfortable thing until the newness has been worn off. – Charles B. Fairbanks