I still have my unemployment books and I remember when I worked for the sanitation department and the post office.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

I haven’t read Horowitz. I didn’t used to read him when he was a Stalinist, and I don’t read him today.

I remember coming to New York in 1974 to do a play here called ‚Equis.‘ And I remember the first morning getting up and walking around the streets, and I thought, ‚I’m home.‘ I felt really at peace here.

When I was 8 years old, it mattered what my favorite singer said and wore and expressed opinions about.

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, ‚Joey, the guy in Olyphant’s out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.‘

The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author’s world.

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune’s inequality exhibits under this sun.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

My mum passing away wasn’t funny, but that funeral and what I went through, the things that happened, looking back at it, there were funny moments. You have to be strong enough to look back at it, to sit and assess the situation.

Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God’s perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with others on Christmas and every other day of the year.

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

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.

I don’t write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.

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

We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.

I did work in a strip club, but I didn’t strip. I danced, and I became very popular.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

I never saw any of my dad’s stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.

You know, from age 17 on, my paycheck was coming from cooking and working in kitchens.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

My life is mine to remember.

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.

Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?

You cannot open a book without learning something.

I worked for Xerox for 4 years and after that I knew I was never going to be a corporate person. It wasn’t my environment.

In the middle of a recession, where we’re just climbing out of it, where the economy -unemployment is still at 9.7 percent, the idea of raising taxes and reducing spending is a prescription for disaster.

Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.

I have worked ever since I was 13.

I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.

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.

O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.

The things hardest to bear are sweetest to remember.

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I’d sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn’t miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

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

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

I don’t read books much.

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.

It’s a big compliment that so many people want to see me. For them, it’s all about football. That’s what they remember about me.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

The book you don’t read won’t help.

There are so many memories for me in Manchester. Everywhere I go, I think, ‚I used to have boutiques here, clubs there, restaurants in that area.‘

I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I’ve got books I need to read.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

I had never been in charge of anything. I’d always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I’d never been in charge of an organization.

One whose knowledge is confined to books and whose wealth is in the possession of others, can use neither his knowledge nor wealth when the need for them arises.

Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.

More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

Read a record number of books in a given month. If you’re focused on intellectual growth, train yourself to study harder and longer than ever before.

The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too – eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko’s, Fatburger, Subway – I was a sandwich artist – and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.

When I was younger, I used to have more flair, I used to do more tricks, the nutmegs, the step-overs.