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" Since I make my living as a literary journalist, not a book scout, I spend inordinate amounts of time either reading or writing. "

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" Basically, I think that most people either make too much money or not enough money. The jobs that are essential and important pay too little, and those that are essentially managerial pay far too much. "

" When I come to visit my mom - every two or three months - I generally spend five or six hours with her each day. She's always immensely glad to see me, her eldest child, her only son. "

" Young people looking for adventure fiction now generally turn to fantasy, but for those of a certain age, the spy thriller has long been the escape reading of choice. "

" In truth, my Anglophilia is fundamentally bookish: I yearn for one of those country house libraries, lined on three walls with mahogany bookshelves, their serried splendor interrupted only by enough space to display, above the fireplace, a pair of crossed swords or sculling oars and perhaps a portrait of some great English worthy. "

" My urge at Christmas time or Hanukkah-time or Kwanzaa-time is that people go to bookstores: that they walk around bookstores and look at the shelves. Go to look for authors that they've loved in the past and see what else those authors have written. "

" Reading books might itself be a bit weird, but obviously okay, since books were part of school, and doing well in school was clearly a good thing. But comics were more like candy, just flashy wrappers without any nourishment. Cheap thrills. "

" Because of Kipling, I've sometimes wondered about keeping a mongoose about the house. But given the cobra population in Silver Spring, Maryland - zero, when last I checked - we hardly need a Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. "

" Many people know that Shakespeare's dramatic 'canon' was established in 1623 by the publication of the so-called First Folio. That hefty volume contained thirty-six plays. "

" From the late 19th to the early 20th century, the December issue of almost any general-interest magazine regularly featured a holiday horror or two. "

" I've been slightly obsessed with paper and notebooks. Among my most precious possessions is a small light-blue, breviary-sized volume - four-and-a-half inches wide, seven inches tall - made by a company called Denbigh. "

" My wife tells me I should check out 'Downton Abbey', but I gather that series might be almost too intense for my temperate nature. "

" For years, I meant to read 'Arabian Sands', Wilfred Thesiger's account of two punishing camel journeys during the late 1940s across Southern Arabia's Empty Quarter. Now that I have, I can sheepishly join the chorus of those who revere the book as one of the half dozen greatest works of modern English travel writing. "

" Books can be a source of solace, but I see them mainly as a source of pleasure, personal as well as esthetic. "

" I didn't work for any newspapers in college, never worked for any newspaper before 'The Washington Post'. "

" With concerted effort, I can follow written instructions, but don't ask me to simply grasp how to operate a smartphone. "

" On any given day, I'm likely to be working at home, hunched over this keyboard, typing Great Thoughts and Beautiful Sentences - or so they seem at the time, like those beautifully flecked and iridescent stones one finds at the seashore that gradually dry into dull gray pebbles. "

" For me, the two weeks between Christmas and Twelfth Night have come to be reserved for desultory reading. The pressure of the holiday is over, the weather outside is frightful, there are lots of leftovers to munch on, vacation hours are being used up. "

" 'The Admirable Crichton' is probably Barrie's most famous work after 'Peter Pan', nearly a pendant to that classic. "

" It's a sad commentary on our time - to use a phrase much favored by my late father - that people increasingly celebrate Christmas Day by going to the movies. "

" While Napoleon believed his fortunes to be governed by destiny, his real genius lay in self-control and martial daring coupled with an indomitable will to power. "

" I think of my own work as part of a decades-long conversation about books and reading with people I will mainly never meet. "

" For those of us with an inward turn of mind, which is another name for melancholy introspection, the beginning of a new year inevitably leads to thoughts about both the future and the past. "

" Not all of E. Nesbit's children's books are fantasies, but even the most realistic somehow seem magical. In her holiday world, nobody ever goes to school, though all the kids know their English history, Greek myths, and classic tales of derring-do. "

" When I was a boy in the late 1950s, the public library refused to stock books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. They were regarded as vulgar, ill-written potboilers. "

" I long ago ran out of bookshelf space and so, like a museum with its art, simply rotate my books from the boxes to the shelves and back again. "

" Digital texts are all well and good, but books on shelves are a presence in your life. As such, they become a part of your day-to-day existence, reminding you, chastising you, calling to you. Plus, book collecting is, hands down, the greatest pastime in the world. "

" Near my desk, I keep a large plastic carton filled with fresh notebooks and stationery of various kinds, sizes, and qualities. "

" At the age of 14, I ran away from home for four days and hitchhiked around western Pennsylvania and southern Ohio. "

" Throughout the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, Latin was the language of learning and international communication. But in the early modern period, it was gradually displaced by French. By the eighteenth century, all the world - or at least all of Europe - aspired to be Parisian. "

" I love the look of books published by the firm of Rupert Hart-Davis: They strike me as handsome, elegant, and inviting. I'll pick up almost anything with that imprint, especially if it's in a jacket or priced low. "