All right, then, I’ll go to hell.

I spend a lot of time reading.

Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.

O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.

‚Discworld‘ is taking something that you know is ridiculous and treating it as if it is serious, to see if something interesting happens when you do so.

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Weak character will neutralize all of the other possible good qualities a person might possess.

I was a chemistry major, but I’m always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I’ve brought scientific thinking to literature. There’s been very little gratitude for this.

An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.

I think I work much harder on the children’s books. I suppose I enjoy that. I find it interesting that although there are more than 30 books in the Discworld series, it is the four that were written for children which have won the awards. I’ve never been quite certain why this is.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

To do a great right do a little wrong.

I rewrote the ending to ‚Farewell to Arms,‘ the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the ‚Pilgrim’s Progress,‘ my first collection was of John Bunyan’s works in separate little volumes.

Action is character.

Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

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

I love a good Dorothy L. Sayers.

When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

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

Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

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

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.

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

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

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

I wasn’t trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of that term; somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law: Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey; I didn’t have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized allies: my people.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever. I’m not really book-smart.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

It is not Kafka’s fault that his wonderful writings have lately turned into a fad, and are read by people who have neither the ability nor the desire to absorb literature.

The most propagandistic element of ‚Frozen‘ was the transformation of the prince at the beginning of the story, who was a perfectly good guy, into a villain with no character development whatsoever about three-quarters of the way to the ending.

Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what’s right.

I think ‚The Color Purple‘ is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.

Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

I grew up reading science fiction.

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

Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.

Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.

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

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

When we see persons of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see persons of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.