A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

I don’t understand what it’s all about or what’s worth what, but if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that x, y or z wins the Nobel Prize, then so be it.

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

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

If you can’t read, it’s going to be hard to realize dreams.

Good ideas are free – or at least they should be.

I think when people mean that Discworld books have become darker they really mean the series is growing up. In ‚The Colour of Magic‘ most of the city is set alight. It’s a joke, in much the same way that the Earth is destroyed almost at the start of Douglas Adams’s ‚The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.‘

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

The true measure of the value of any business leader and manager is performance.

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

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

All right, then, I’ll go to hell.

I would always want printed books.

You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it’s humorous, all the attention to it, because it’s hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that’s happened to me.

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?

If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

Reading isn’t good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn’t hit home runs. So I gave up reading.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

When I was a kid, I read the science-fiction shelves, and I read the fantasy shelves.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

Gulf Lesson One is the value of airpower.

I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire.

After you finish a book, you know, you’re dead. But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.

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

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

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

Read with care, George Orwell’s diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics.

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

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

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.

Know your worth! People always act like they’re doing more for you than you’re doing for them.

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

I’m the only person you’ve ever met who has read Longfellow.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

You cannot open a book without learning something.

I’ll tell you who I absolutely adore: Ian McEwan.

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don’t think so… I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.

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

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.

My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.

I’ve been reading tabloids since I was nine. I love a good story.

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.

I cannot live without books.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

The connection between psychology, mythology, and literature is as important as the connection between psychology and biology and the hard sciences.

He that overvalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.

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

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

The true worth of a man is not to be found in man himself, but in the colours and textures that come alive in others.

Stay active. Read the Word. Worship with other believers. Continue to give. Keep learning and growing. Your faith will be unleashed!

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.