Housing Works

"At the same time, it would be a hopeless world if nobody was able to learn from their mistakes. I have to believe that everyone is capable of changing, but I don’t necessarily think it follows that all change is the result of self-awareness or direct engagement with one’s past. Sometimes the world conspires to offer you opportunities you don’t necessarily deserve, or to make you better than you’d planned to become."

"The fire of personal enthusiasm is what really makes for the best advice on what to read next, a quality rarely found in an ordinary book review. That burst of incandescent awareness and pleasure that only a good book can give us often becomes an uncontrollable desire to grab complete strangers by the lapels and demand that they, too, read this book, right now, on the double. Drop everything. Do it."

"Ask any publisher whether they would rather have the Proust and Joyce backlists or those of the Nora Roberts and Tom Clancy of Proust’s and Joyce’s day. Really good stories, like really good wines, really do drink well for a longer time."

"Stories, more even than stars or spectacle, are still the currency of life, or commercial entertainment, and look likely to last longer than the euro. There’s no escaping stories, or the pressures to tell them."