To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I’ve got books I need to read.

Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‚the book lady.‘ The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the ‚book lady‘ title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I’ve done something good with my life and with my success.

Something’s very wrong with a nation that would rather spend money on war than take care of its children.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

I read poetry to save time.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

You cannot open a book without learning something.

You can’t move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn’t mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.

How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?

I cannot live without books.

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

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

I got interested in reading very early, because a story was read to me, by Hans Christian Andersen, which was ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ and I don’t know if you remember ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ but it’s dreadfully sad. The little mermaid falls in love with this prince, but she cannot marry him because she is a mermaid.

I notice that young men go to the universities in order to become doctors or philosophers or anything, so long as it is a title, and that many go in for those professions who are utterly unfit for them, while others who would be very competent are prevented by business or their daily cares, which keep them away from letters.

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

I don’t care how busy I am – I will always make time for what’s most important to me.

It was a favorite expression of Theophrastus that time was the most valuable thing that a man could spend.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

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 would like to be remembered as a guy who had a set of priorities, and was willing to live by those priorities. In terms of accomplishments, my biggest accomplishment is that I kept the country safe amidst a real danger.

Millions of students now, in all the schools of America, are reading science fiction and especially, thank God, ‚The Martian Chronicles.‘

Since thou are not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour.

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.

Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

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

It’s not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, ‚Read,‘ but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, ‚Don’t read, don’t think, just write,‘ and the result could be a mountain of drivel.

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.

I read to my kid, but I can’t stand reading.

I never thought, in my lifetime, that you’d be able to watch movies, read books and listen to music from a phone, but I guess the technology of tomorrow is here today.

Sometimes you can’t prioritise family and you feel guilty.

I’m screamingly funny, you know, I really am in the books. And that helps because I’m funnier than a lot of people, I think, and that’s appreciated by young people.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

I think the reason I don’t read is because, when I’m reading, I feel like I’m missing out on something else. You know, What are my friends doing? Where’s my girlfriend?

The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that’s powerful.

I still have my unemployment books and I remember when I worked for the sanitation department and the post office.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author’s world.

When I was young I didn’t care about education, just money and box office.

My problem was my inability to spend much time at home. I thought my family was secure, so I went running around everyplace else. I guess I had more of an effect on other people’s kids than I did my own.

There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil.

Love can do much, but duty more.

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Time is the least thing we have of.

I used to take my short stories to girls‘ homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?

If anything, I get most upset because I wanna read a good paper first thing in the morning. And if I see a lie about myself flash across the front of the cover, I don’t think much of the rest of the newspaper.

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don’t know what you’re doing.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

You see the film, you might be entertained, and if it’s not a great film, it loses its power very quickly. I think even simply acceptable books stay with us a lot longer.

Women in particular need to keep an eye on their physical and mental health, because if we’re scurrying to and from appointments and errands, we don’t have a lot of time to take care of ourselves. We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‚to do‘ list.

If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.

I met my husband before I became a star, and he doesn’t care about any of it.

I’m sure most parents read to their children to explain what certain things mean. So books are a good way to convey a message to anybody. Everybody reads.