I’m not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.

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

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

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

The moment I said I’d finished a book, I knew what would happen. There would be a bidding war, and I would end up with someone who’d got the fattest wallet, who had bought it because I’d written Harry Potter. That would have been why.

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

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

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.

‚Royal Beatings‘ was my first story, and it was published in 1977. But I sent all my early stories to ‚The New Yorker‘ in the 1950s, and then I stopped sending for a long time and sent only to magazines in Canada. ‚The New Yorker‘ sent me nice notes, though – penciled, informal messages. They never signed them. They weren’t terribly encouraging.

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

Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it.

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, ‚Nobody under 40,‘ or ‚Nobody under 25.‘ With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is ‚reader.‘

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

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.

All good books have one thing in common – they are truer than if they had really happened.

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

When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure.

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

A home without books is a body without soul.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

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

Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.

I think I work much harder on the children’s books. I suppose I enjoy that. I find it interesting that although there are more than 30 books in the Discworld series, it is the four that were written for children which have won the awards. I’ve never been quite certain why this is.

Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

‚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.

Over the years, people I’ve met have often asked me what I’m working on, and I’ve usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden.

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

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

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I’m 100 percent fiction writer… I don’t want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don’t state my political messages to anybody.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

I like writing. I get cranky when I can’t. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

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

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

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

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

I have zero desire, just so you know, to be in the limelight. I don’t think it’s good for the country to have a former president criticize his successor. You’re not going to see me giving my opinions in the public arena, until I start selling my book. I’m going to emerge then submerge.

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.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

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

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

If literature isn’t everything, it’s not worth a single hour of someone’s trouble.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

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.

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

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

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.

The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

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.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

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

I spend a lot of time reading.

After you finish a book, you know, you’re dead. But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.