It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

I never liked Hans Christian Andersen because I knew he was always getting at me.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.

A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.

Whatever came to mind, whatever came to hand, I would read.

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

I think ‚The Color Purple‘ is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

If the government ever imposes a tax on books – and I wouldn’t put it past them – I’m in dead trouble.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

I love a good Dorothy L. Sayers.

My favourite poem is the one that starts ‚Thirty days hath September‘ because it actually tells you something.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

The story as told in The Odyssey doesn’t hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.

Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

No book includes the entire world. It’s limited. And so it doesn’t seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There’s so much other material to write about.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

I just feel that ‚The Color Purple,‘ which was my 10th book, was a true gift from my ancestors.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

All my stories are like the Greek and Roman myths, and the Egyptian myths, and the Old and New Testament.

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don’t think so… I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

The truest form of any form of revolutionary Left, whatever you want to call it, was Jack Kerouac, E.E. Cummings, & Ginsberg’s period. Excuse me, but that’s where it was at.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

I think the definition of a book is changing.

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

‚Discworld‘ is taking something that you know is ridiculous and treating it as if it is serious, to see if something interesting happens when you do so.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

I’m not well-read, but when I read, I read well.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

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

What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

Well, if Fortune be a woman, she’s a good wench for this gear.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

I’ve been trying to… Having been an English literary graduate, I’ve been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.