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

I like to read books. I like to listen to music.

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

I never heard of an old man forgetting where he had buried his money! Old people remember what interests them: the dates fixed for their lawsuits, and the names of their debtors and creditors.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

I am the freest author in the world.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

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

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

I read the ‚Old Testament‘ all the way through when I was about 13 and was horrified. A few months afterwards I read ‚The Origin Of Species‘, hallucinating very mildly because I was in bed with flu at the time. Despite that, or because of that, it all made perfect sense.

When I write, I can shake off all my cares.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

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 wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution – they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.

I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

I was a very keen reader of science fiction.

The proper study of mankind is books.

Working with a guy like Ice Cube on ‚Ride Along,‘ you learn so much. He’s a guy who produces, writes, and directs, so you watch and learn and ask questions. As you go, you learn and figure out what you should and shouldn’t do. I do nothing but soak up information.

My advice is this. For Christ’s sake, don’t write a book that is suitable for a kid of 12 years old, because the kids who read who are 12 years old are reading books for adults. I read all of the James Bond books when I was about 11, which was approximately the right time to read James Bond books.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

I don’t care much for equations myself. This is partly because it is difficult for me to write them down, but mainly because I don’t have an intuitive feeling for equations.

As I read more and more – and it was not all verse, by any means – my love for the real life of words increased until I knew that I must live with them and in them, always. I knew, in fact, that I must be a writer of words, and nothing else.

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

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don’t think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

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

I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.

I notice that my characters go out to dinner and have fun and take these great trips, but I spend so much time on their lives, I don’t have much of a personal life of my own. I have to sort of remember to fill out that little notebook on me.

I will never win an Oscar, and do you know why? First of all, because I’m not Jewish. Secondly, I make too much money for all those old farts in the Academy.

My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I’ve taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, ‚The Hornet’s Nest,‘ I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now.

Money for me today does not really matter.

I wanted to write.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

The money in politics is a cash cow for the media.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

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.

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day’s work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

Money’s important. Everyone cares about money. And when you don’t have money, money becomes the overriding obsession of your life.

The mere brute pleasure of reading the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

I’m not well-read, but when I read, I read well.

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

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.

Become slower in your journey through life. Practice yoga and meditation if you suffer from ‚hurry sickness.‘ Become more introspective by visiting quiet places such as churches, museums, mountains and lakes. Give yourself permission to read at least one novel a month for pleasure.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I’m talking about myself very directly.

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.

I’ve never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.