I’ll tell you who I absolutely adore: Ian McEwan.

My favorite book is anything by Kurt Vonnegut – he’s my literary hero. I got to meet him several times, which was a great thrill for me. I don’t really remember what we talked about.

If you feel that there’s the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can’t, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you’d be a very strange person indeed.

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

I don’t do Shakespeare. I don’t talk in that kind of broken English.

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this – death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all – make us laugh, think, cry and cheer – preferably in that order.

I cannot live without books.

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.

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

I cannot claim to have had a hard time publishing.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

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

I was a chemistry major, but I’m always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I’ve brought scientific thinking to literature. There’s been very little gratitude for this.

I’ve had all six of my books reach the New York Times bestseller list, which is especially rewarding seeing as I flunked out of high school twice because I couldn’t write. It just goes to show you that we learn from our mistakes.

I read a lot. I enjoy reading a lot.

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

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

In books lies the soul of the whole past time.

I’ve only written one science-fiction book: ‚Fahrenheit 451.‘ That book is a book based on real facts and my hatred of people who destroy books.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

I don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

I don’t understand what it’s all about or what’s worth what, but if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that x, y or z wins the Nobel Prize, then so be it.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

For 20 years, Simon & Schuster asked me, ‚Why don’t you write your autobiography?‘

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

I’ve just finished my 20th book this past year and I’m working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I’ll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I’m an artist too.

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.

I’ve never known any trouble than an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

O, Thou precious Lord Jesus Christ, we do adore Thee with all our hearts. Thou art Lord of all.

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

I am a dangerous man when turned loose with a typewriter.

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.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they’re just infested with lots of stuff.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

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

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

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

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

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

‚The Lady’s World‘ should be made the recognized organ for the expression of women’s opinions on all subjects of literature, art and modern life, and yet it should be a magazine that men could read with pleasure.

It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. Of old they spoke the languages of Men, after their own fashion, and liked and disliked much the same things as Men did. But what exactly our relationship is can no longer be discovered.