“Acting so obviously submissive to Max around strangers, I felt a lot of humiliation. The looks from people, the comments. But I also felt this strange sense of pride. I am his possession, his prope...”

“This is a forum for readers. Authors walk these halls at their own risk. I’ve been to the Coliseum in Rome. GR is just that. Books are gladiators. Readers are ravenous citizens awaiting their next ...”

“Herman Melville came to see me at the Consulate, looking much as he used to do (a little paler, and perhaps a little sadder), in a rough outside coat, and with his characteristic gravity and reserv...”

“(On Charles Dickens) It has been the peculiarity and the marvel of this mans power, that he has invested his puppets with a charm that has enabled him to dispense with human nature.”

“The books we read in childhood don't exist anymore; they sailed off with the wind, leaving bare skeletons behind. Whoever still has in him the memory and marrow of childhood should rewrite these bo...”

“Truthfully, wicked people reveal themselves in words first, to inhibit speech would inhibit us seeing the wicked before they act.”

“Now she understood a few things: that the American academy, which one might have thought the place to defend freedom of speech, had been the seat and soul of abrogating freedom of speech, if the fi...”

“Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire.”