Literary Star Gifts

Clara had come a long way from those readings at the public library.

"Are you insane?!" The Velveteen Skunk

Bob encounters one of the bugs in the Jean Paul Sartre fan website.

"After years of cartoon rejections, Bill stooped to trying a little shameless product placement."

'Peter the Flying Hippo is my favorite storybook character without any merchandising tie-ins.'

Victor Hugo

"Do me next."

'I didn't dedicate my book, A Lifetime of Wine Tasting, to my 3 ex-wives and nine kids, because they made it possible. I did it because they made it necessary.'

Honoré de Balzac

Jean-Paul Sartre

"They've remained remarkably faithful to the text."

Gone With the Wind: The Beach Blanket

J. R. R. Tolkien

"Your usually vicious sarcasm is weak. Go pump some irony."

Distractions Of The Great

"Well, we needed the rain."

'Charlotte's Website' ('The children's book classic rewritten for the electronic era!')

Omar Khayyam Meets Trader Joe

"Gone with the wind with cats" "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." "Me neither, who cares—let's take a nap."

Iris Murdoch

"It that it? I don't have my contacts in."

'Which wine goes best with 'the old man and the sea'?'

The intellectual.

"It's basically the 'Tragedy of King Lear' but with animated penguins."

'It's some more story ideas from Francis Bacon.'

Turning Japanese: I really think so.

Thomas Hardy

"A world without Ovid? I can't even begin to imagine a world without Ovid."

"William Blake said you can see the whole world in a grain of sand, but he doesn't always make a lot of sense."

'You want a quick read? How about this one: 'Memoirs of an Amnesic'?'

What would Charlotte Bronte do, she thought to herself.

"She's a show dog...purebred, of course." "That's great! My guy's a Sanskrit scholar...wrote for the Harvard Lampoon."

"Mrs. Berg calls my book report a finely crafted debut and she looks forward to my next effort."

'Tarzan interviewing for a position as a corporate lawyer.' An interviewer asks, 'When we go against the gorillas, how can we be sure that you won't forget which side you're representing?'

"I like his earlier work better, particularly the ones I said I didn't like at the time."