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.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

I always say the strength of democracy lies in criticism. If there is no criticism, that means there is no democracy. And if you want to grow, you must invite criticism. And I want to grow; I want to invite criticism.

The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That’s one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living.

That fatal drollery called a representative government.

I don’t know if I officially proofread my father’s book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.

I’ve been writing my entire life, and I’ll always write.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

I’ve never had a divorce, but I’ve seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can’t write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I’m able to kind of express it, or their joy.

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

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.

Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.

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

I never write about the road. I never write about hotels or anything like that.

When I was seven or eight years old, I began to read the science-fiction magazines that were brought by guests into my grandparents‘ boarding house in Waukegan, Illinois. Those were the years when Hugo Gernsback was publishing ‚Amazing Stories,‘ with vivid, appallingly imaginative cover paintings that fed my hungry imagination.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

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

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

I was a grade B housewife, maybe a B minus. But when I got time to write, I would be unable to finish a sentence. I had anxiety attacks. Partly it was a way of personifying the situation because I couldn’t breathe. I was surrounded by people and by duties. I was a housewife and the children’s mother, and I was judged on how I performed those roles.

America is a Nation with a mission – and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace – a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.

For people who are readers, reading is important to them.

Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil.

Our faith is released as we say, pray and do the Word.

After the first day of practice, there’s not one guy who’s playing at 100 percent or who feels great. Sometimes, getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth is the hardest part of the day – it just hurts.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

I’m always trying. Between every book, I think, ‚Well now, it’s time to get down to the serious stuff.‘

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

With all of their benefits, and there are many, one of the things I regret about e-books is that they have taken away the necessity of trawling foreign bookshops or the shelves of holiday houses to find something to read. I’ve come across gems and stinkers that way, and both can be fun.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

All the learnin‘ my father paid for was a bit o‘ birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

A principle is the expression of perfection, and as imperfect beings like us cannot practise perfection, we devise every moment limits of its compromise in practice.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

I’m tall, fat, rather bald, red-faced, double-chinned, black-haired, have a deep voice, and wear glasses for reading.

If you play an instrument, it makes you a better singer. The more you play, the better you sing, the more you sing, the better you play.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I’d be writing hit songs every minute.

I have trouble reading modern Hebrew. In the 1950s, I could read anything. I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with contemporary Hebrew. It’s quite difficult.

Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.

The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom.

And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.

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

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.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

We have the best government that money can buy.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

We Americans… bear the ark of liberties of the world.

I’m glad I can’t vote.

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

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

I have two pairs of reading glasses. One pair is for reading fiction, the other for non-fiction. I’ve read the Bible twice wearing each pair, and it’s the same.

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television – there wasn’t a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.