“For the record, my own loyalties are uncomplicated. I adore few humans more than I love books. I make no promises, but I do not expect to purchase a Kindle or a Nook or any of their offspring.”

I hope to keep bringing home bound paper books until my shelves snap from their weight, until there is no room in my apartment for a bed or a couch or another human being, until the floorboards collapse and my eyes blur to dim. But the book, bless it, is not a simple thing.

We do not know what is being done in our name. Worse, we do not ask.

If they are ignored, [Alice] Callaghan worries, the dangers of handing the streets over to private security forces will only grow. ‘Until they begin interfering with the rights of middle-class people,’ she says, ‘you won’t have anybody crying about it. But by then, it will be too late.’

I adore my dad. He’s a 78-year-old man and my inspiration.

Those are the moments that I think are precious to a dog-when, with his adoring soul coming through his eyes, he feels that you are really thinking of him.

I adore America. It’s an extraordinary country. A new country.

People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.

When I was little, I used to adore gold. It was something special.

Noll is highly respected in Brazil, and at the same time divisive, somewhat like Hilda Hilst. Neither of them enjoys the universal acclaim you might associate with Clarice Lispector, whom everyone adores, myself included.

I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.