Whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.

It’s simple: You get a part. You play a part. You play it well. You do your work and you go home. And what is wonderful about movies is that once they’re done, they belong to the people. Once you make it, it’s what they see. That’s where my head is at.

I’ve only wanted paper and beautiful colors. It was my dream, and it still is my dream. And books. They’re all I need, and the rest I can do without.

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 don’t read books much.

The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.

It’s very difficult to read a book on your computer.

In every movie I do have a dialogue.

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

‚Classic.‘ A book which people praise and don’t read.

One of my movies was called ‚True Lies.‘ It’s what the Democrats should have called their convention.

In the book of Gaga, fame is in your heart, fame is there to comfort you, to bring you self-confidence and worth whenever you need it.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

All the screen cowboys behaved like real gentlemen. They didn’t drink, they didn’t smoke. When they knocked the bad guy down, they always stood with their fists up, waiting for the heavy to get back on his feet. I decided I was going to drag the bad guy to his feet and keep hitting him.

There’s no difference between movies and television. None at all. Except in a lot of cases, television’s much better than movies.

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

Movies were invented for Jimmy Cagney, and he was invented for the movies. A perfect match.

Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.

When you pick up a book, everyone knows it’s imaginary. You don’t have to pretend it’s not a book. We don’t have to pretend that people don’t write books. That omniscient third-person narration isn’t the only way to do it. Once you’re writing in the first person, then the narrator is a writer.

For me the greatest source of income is still movies. Nothing – stocks, financial speculation, real estate speculation or businesses – makes more money for me than making movies.

Life guided me to being a bodyguard, protecting people, then in the movies, so I’m happy with everything because basically all I ever wanted to do was be a good son and take care of my mother.

Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

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

I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were.

My dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd.

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.

I’ve written a number of books that have to do with the evolution of humans, human intelligence, human emotions.

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

I used to pretend that my Peugeot driving to the gym in the rain in Dublin was a Ferrari on the Vegas strip.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

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.

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 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.

People love westerns worldwide. There’s something fantasy-like about an individual fighting the elements. Or even bad guys and the elements. It’s a simpler time. There’s no organized laws and stuff.

I’d go from film to film and almost detach from one world and jump in another. I was living as these people and not having a self. I didn’t know who I was. And things just get really dark.

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 really don’t believe in magic.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.

See, ‚A Time to Kill‘ was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.

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

I cannot live without books.

I’m not a film buff. I don’t watch a lot of movies.

Nobody should come to the movies unless he believes in heroes.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

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

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

Before ever meeting Priyanka Chopra, I had heard her name coming out of Bollywood and was impressed: she was beautiful, talented, had made nearly 50 movies, earned multiple awards – a massive star.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

I just make good movies. That’s the way I thank my fans.

I am a giant proponent of giant screens. But I accept the fact that most of my movies are going to be seen on phones.

I’m not a nerd, don’t plan to be a nerd and read books – which I can’t do at all.

I love the movies, and when I go to see a movie that’s been made from one of my books, I know that it isn’t going to be exactly like my novel because a lot of other people have interpreted it. But I also know it has an idea that I’ll like because that idea occurred to me, and I spent a year, or a year and a half of my life working on it.

Kids end up seeing my movies anyway but some of the mothers get mad at me so I figured I’d make one that I can’t get yelled at for.

I read a lot. I enjoy reading a lot.

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

When the first big paycheque with ‚Dumb And Dumber‘ hit, I went: ‚Gosh, I wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think, was that worth $7 million?‘ But that never happened. If anything, it made me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.

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?

I sell escapism.