We're competing with everything: the beach the mall bookstores. Libraries are in a transition right now caught between two forces the old ways and technology. Libraries are under a lot of pressure to provide both.

Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then only a few feet away in the cookbook section just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel read 2 000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

This is a feminist bookstore. There is no humor section.

My books are shelved in different places depending on the bookstore. Sometimes they can be found in the Mystery section sometimes in the Humor department and occasionally even in the Literature aisle which is somewhat astounding.

As I watched bookstores close I began to wonder how that felt for the owners. Owning a bookstore was their dream and now they're struggling and seeing those dreams fall apart.

I don't want to be in my car all day. I love getting up in the morning in Venice and walking my dogs down to the cafe to get my tea and then perhaps going to a bookstore and sitting and reading then walking to the beach.

I'm totally into new age and self-help books. I used to work in a bookstore and that's the section they gave me and I got way into it. I just loved the power of positive thinking letting yourself go.