Above all, a book is the riverbank for the river of language. Language without the riverbank is only television talk-a free fall, a loose splash, a spill.

Words, isolated in the velvet of radio, took on a jeweled particularity. Television has quite the opposite effect: words are drowned in the visual soup in which they are obliged to be served.

One can watch hours and hours of TV without actually losing interest, but, as with Chinese food, one is rarely left with much residue of nourishment.

Being on TV is like being alive, only more so.

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.

Disparagement of television is second only to watching television as an American pastime.

They say that ninety per cent of TV is junk. But ninety per cent of everything is junk.

Television is the menace that everyone loves to hate but can't seem to live without.

Disparagement of television is second only to watching television as an American pastime.

I'm glad cave people didn't invent television because they would have just sat around and watched talk shows all day instead of creating tools.