Babies aged between eight and sixteen months know on average six to eight fewer words for every hour of baby DVDs and videos they watch daily.

Indeed, only 63 words ... are needed to make up half of everything said on TV.

Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.

We are sliding towards an irreversible obsession with totally visual communication.

The eye has been trained to scan, and to receive, and less and less to read.
More and more, Americans don't have the time to think, let alone to read.

If there is no common culture, no common standards, then each group becomes an island; metaphorical sharks are perceived to cruise between the islands, so they have less and less to do with one another, and diversity becomes its opposite.

We all have a long, imaginary shelf of masterpieces we have not read.

There is more than one way not to read, the most radical of which is not to open a book at all.

Turn to page 69 of any book and read it. If you like that page, buy the book.

To many readers, Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” is the most intimidating of literary monuments. It is there, like a vast, unexplored continent, and all sorts of daunting rumors circulate about life in the interior. But once you cross the border, you discover that the world of “War and Peace” is more familiar and at the same time more surprising than the rumors suggested.

What does it mean to be a writer?
Constant self-monitoring to see if a thought is actually an idea.