Absolutes Quote by Paul Auster

We have different kinds of intimacy with many, many people. I'm disappointed by well-written novels that only deal with two or three people.

— Ann Patchett

“Every writer is first a member of a community of readers, and the deepest purpose of reading and writing fiction is to sustain a…

— Jonathan Franzen

“There is a social contract between the readers/buyers of romance novels and the novelists who write them. It's this: the girl ends up with…

— Allison

Books are solitudes in which we meet.

— Rebecca Solnit

We're all strangers connected by what we reveal, what we share, what we take away--our stories. I guess that's what I love about books--they…

— Libba Bray

“We're at once alone and in close company: this is the great gift of the novel, the element that makes reading more than a…

— Brenda Walker

Novel writing is a kind of private pleasure, even if nothing comes of it in worldly terms.

— Barbara Pym

A novel is a journey into your own soul, and you seek there to discover those things that you share with all others.

— Richard Flanagan

“The books we love offer a sketch of a whole universe that we secretly inhabit, and in which we desire the other person to…

— Pierre Bayard

“I see the process of reaching out, sharing yourself, communicating, establishing contact between two people as similar to, if not the same as, the…

— Karina Szczurek

you can not fully read a book without being alone. But through this very solitude you become intimately involved with people whom you might…

— Cornelia Funke

For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.

— Mary McCarthy