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

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

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

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

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.

I’ve been trying to… Having been an English literary graduate, I’ve been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.

My first popular book, ‚A Brief History of Time,‘ aroused a great deal of interest, but many found it difficult to understand.

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

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

I don’t mind saying, you know, that I don’t take a salary from the church, and God has blessed me with more money than I could imagine from my books. It’s been printed all over, so I don’t feel like I am hiding anything.

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

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

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

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

You don’t read in your own field. You read in that field when you’re young, so that you can learn.

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

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

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

As for hobbies, I don’t really read or watch TV.

People who read the tabloids deserve to be lied to.

Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

I read poetry to save time.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

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

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.

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

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

For me, a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

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

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

Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

I love a good Dorothy L. Sayers.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

I’d done a lot of research in Hollywood and in academia. I love research and so I wanted to kind of ground the book in history, in things that I read that were universal and timeless and then kind of let my own experiences sort of filter through all of this history.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever.

If you can’t read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!

A book worth reading is worth buying.

I love great journalism. I appreciate it. I love a good, you know, I love good news stories. I love great books. I love great articles. I appreciate them so much, and they’ve been part of my education as a woman.

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

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

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

‚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.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

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

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

I’ve loved reading all my life.