Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Age doesn’t bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It’s the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am.

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.

The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours – and I think probably gave me many nightmares.

The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that’s powerful.

Reading isn’t good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn’t hit home runs. So I gave up reading.

‚Mystic River‘ just smelled interesting to me. So I read it and liked it right away. Even the dialogue in it was great.

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

You don’t read in your own field. You read in that field when you’re young, so that you can learn.

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one’s memories.

I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest – but suffer from a constant strain.

I was a very keen reader of science fiction.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

It’s very difficult to read a book on your computer.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash.

The brain is a muscle, and I’m a kind of body-builder.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Miss a meal if you have to, but don’t miss a book.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

You cannot open a book without learning something.

I’m sure the feeling of fear, as long as you can take advantage of it and not be rendered useless by it, can make you extend yourself beyond what you would regard as your capacity. If you’re afraid, the blood seems to flow freely through the veins, and you really do feel a sense of stimulation.

When I was 10 years old, I loved – I loved books, and I used to haunt the secondhand bookshop. And I found a little book I could just afford, and I bought it, and I took it home. And I climbed up my favorite tree, and I read that book from cover to cover. And that was Tarzan of the Apes. I immediately fell in love with Tarzan.

We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain.

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

I like to be creative.

I spend a lot of time reading.

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

I’ve just always been a reader.

In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don’t try to play younger than I really am.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

As for hobbies, I don’t really read or watch TV.

I’m the only person you’ve ever met who has read Longfellow.

When you’re 25 or 30, you know, you can’t wear lime-green eye shadow anymore.

You stay teachable most by reading books. By reading what other people went through.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I’ll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

I grew up reading science fiction.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

The brain is wider than the sky.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

I read all the time, and I’m often struck by something I’m reading.

I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

Look at a book. A book is the right size to be a book. They’re solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book. You can find your place in microseconds. Books are really good at being books, and no matter what happens, books will survive.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.

Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

Talent is something that comes from within; it has nothing to do with age.

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I’ll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I’m crepuscular.

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

It seems as if an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavour; riot and extravagance by cleanliness and hard work.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.