When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.

I cannot read a single word of the Hindoos without being elevated.

Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can’t expect an angel to look out.

God does not play dice.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

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

I was the only kid who anybody I knew has ever seen actually walk into a lamppost with his eyes wide open. Everybody assumed that there must be something going on inside, because there sure as hell wasn’t anything going on on the outside!

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

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.

I don’t write material. Funny things happen to me in the course of a day, and I just make notes.

I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

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.

Lost time is never found again.

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

I hate to be smart.

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.

I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

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

I’m not denyin‘ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ‚em to match the men.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

I’m a meathead, man. You’ve got smart people, and you’ve got dumb people. I just happen to be dumb.

I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to look like one.

When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child… eventually.

In the end, everything is a gag.

‚Educational‘ refers to the process, not the object. Although, come to think of it, some of my teachers could easily have been replaced by a cheeseburger.

If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.

Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy; Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner.

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.‘

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

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.‘

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

My doctor told me I shouldn’t work out until I’m in better shape. I told him, ‚All right; don’t send me a bill until I pay you.‘

Jerry Ford is so dumb he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

OK, so what’s the speed of dark?

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which many believe goes hand in hand with it – will be dead as well.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

Honestly, I think we should be delighted people still want to read, be it on a Kindle or a Nook or whatever the latest device is.

Everything I say is a joke. I am a joke myself.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.

It is really funny when people say you’d be obvious for a great villain.

It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.

I am odd-looking. I sometimes think I look like a funny Muppet.

When the sword is once drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation.

Most of the stuff I do on the show comes out of me just trying to make my friends laugh.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

I grew up reading science fiction.