‚Classic.‘ A book which people praise and don’t read.

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.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

When you focus on how wonderful God is and all the great things He’s done… is doing… and even will do in your life, your natural response will be praise, adoration and awe. Don’t let yourself ever get used to it… stay amazed!

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

All our actions, as well as our thoughts and words, should praise Him who always blesses us.

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

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

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.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

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

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.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.

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.

When you’re young, you keep reading new writers and you keep changing your mind about how you ought to sound.

The story as told in The Odyssey doesn’t hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.

Become slower in your journey through life. Practice yoga and meditation if you suffer from ‚hurry sickness.‘ Become more introspective by visiting quiet places such as churches, museums, mountains and lakes. Give yourself permission to read at least one novel a month for pleasure.

The moment I said I’d finished a book, I knew what would happen. There would be a bidding war, and I would end up with someone who’d got the fattest wallet, who had bought it because I’d written Harry Potter. That would have been why.

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.

I’ve actually not read any books on time management.

I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka.

The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

If it’s all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it’s all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that’s it. You’re not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You’re not going to read that book again.

Don Quixote’s misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

Charlotte Bronte was writing about sex. I supposed Jane Austen was, too. Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?

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

If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?

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

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

I like the language in Proust but not the context.

And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don’t think anyone in my family would really feel I’d done them an injustice by saying that. We didn’t see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.

Burroughs is crap. Crap.

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

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

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

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

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

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

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.

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

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.

For people who are readers, reading is important to them.

Sadly, I do my homework. I’ve a soft spot for the boring minutiae. I read the Charter of the United Nations before meeting with Kofi Annan. I read the Meltzer report, and then I’ll read C. Fred Bergsten’s defense of institutions like the World Bank and the I.M.F. It’s embarrassing to admit.

I try to read as much as I can. I try to read an informative article every day. I try to stay read up on our world issues.

In praising Antony I have dispraised Caesar.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

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.

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

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.

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.

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