The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.

But I hope that I will never have a life that is not surrounded by books,
by books that are bound in paper and cloth and glue,
such perishable things for ideas that have lasted thousands of tears,
or just since the most recent Harry Potter.
I hope I am always walled in by the very weight and breadth
and clumsy, inefficient, antiquated bulk of them,
hope that I spend my last days on this Earth
arranging and rearranging them
on thrones of good, honest pine, oak, and mahogany,
because they just feel good in my hands,
because I just like to look at their covers,
and dream of the promise of the great stories inside.

There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.

The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying.

There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.

Mr Cobb was my escort. Such a nice escort, Mr Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten - when Larry Cobb was sober.