Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

What’s fascinating is, people in Washington would rather spend time in Hollywood, and people in Hollywood would rather spend time in Washington.

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.

Before I became a film major, I was very heavily into social science, I had done a lot of sociology, anthropology, and I was playing in what I call social psychology, which is sort of an offshoot of anthropology/sociology – looking at a culture as a living organism, why it does what it does.

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society.

They’ll forget all the rubbish when I’ve gone, and they’ll remember the football. If only one person thinks I’m the best player in the world, that’s good enough for me.

I started out in anthropology, so to me how society works, how people put themselves together and make things work, has always been a big interest.

You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.

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

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

There’s a reason why the Foo Fighters don’t blast out Nirvana songs every night: because we have a lot of respect for them. You know, that’s hallowed ground. We have to be careful. We have to tread lightly. We have talked about it before, but the opportunity hasn’t really come up, or it just hasn’t felt right.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country – we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

I’ve only wanted paper and beautiful colors. It was my dream, and it still is my dream. And books. They’re all I need, and the rest I can do without.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.

There can never be any stop to learn about different cultures by travelling to different places. And whatever comes your way, continue the healthy eating habits.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

If you carefully consider what you want to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success.

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, ‚Nobody under 40,‘ or ‚Nobody under 25.‘ With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is ‚reader.‘

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.

The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it – aliens.

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

My mother insisted that her children read.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

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.‘

I don’t know if she should worry too much, I mean some of our greatest writers have had movies made of their books, lots of Hemingway novels were turned into movies, it doesn’t hurt the book.

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.

Tradition is the illusion of permanence.

Cinema reflects culture and there is no harm in adapting technology, but not at the cost of losing your originality.

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television – there wasn’t a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.

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

‚WASP‘ is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so it’s inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way that the other hyphenations just are not.

I used to have nightmares that they would put ‚He played Ted‘ on my tombstone.

I don’t read ‚chick lit,‘ fantasy or science fiction but I’ll give any book a chance if it’s lying there and I’ve got half an hour to kill.

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That’s how the human species has done as well as it has.

Burroughs is crap. Crap.

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.

She would have thrived as a grandmother. I know how much she would have contributed to their lives, and I am sad they will miss out on that.

My parents taught me service – not by saying, but by doing. That was my culture, the culture of my family.

We can all be successful and make money, but when we die, that ends. But when you are significant is when you help other people be successful. That lasts many a lifetime.

This is not Johnson’s war. This is America’s war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you.

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.

I don’t have space to enter into the examples or the history of this, so I’m left with having to make the bold statement that culture is extinct.

I read poetry to save time.

‚Mystic River‘ just smelled interesting to me. So I read it and liked it right away. Even the dialogue in it was great.

Our focus needs to be less on what our legacy’s going to be or how we can control each other and more how we can give to each other.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.

I just feel that ‚The Color Purple,‘ which was my 10th book, was a true gift from my ancestors.

In today’s world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they’re cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28.

A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book.

India has 2,000,000 gods and worships them all. In religion, all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.

I have trouble reading modern Hebrew. In the 1950s, I could read anything. I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with contemporary Hebrew. It’s quite difficult.

Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.

Yes, there is a terrible moral in ‚Dorian Gray‘ – a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.