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.

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

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

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

I was brought up differently than the average American child because the average child is brought up expecting to be happy.

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

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

I’ve only written one science-fiction book: ‚Fahrenheit 451.‘ That book is a book based on real facts and my hatred of people who destroy books.

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

I’m so nervous. I’ve always been nervous, ever since I was a kid.

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I’ll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I’m crepuscular.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

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

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

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

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.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

Where I grew up – I grew up on the north side of Akron, lived in the projects. So those scared and lonely nights – that’s every night. You hear a lot of police sirens, you hear a lot of gunfire. Things that you don’t want your kids to hear growing up.

I am a child but I have to think and act like a woman, this business forces you to.

I was probably tall as a child, but I just stopped growing.

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

People who read the tabloids deserve to be lied to.

Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.

I’m just a kid – I’ve got a lot of stuff to do yet.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

I love a good Dorothy L. Sayers.

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

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

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

I’m not a nerd, don’t plan to be a nerd and read books – which I can’t do at all.

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

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it’s always just one person encountering the book, it’s not an audience, it’s one to one.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

A home without books is a body without soul.

I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

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

I grew up in the east side of Detroit in an area where there was very little, except for a lot of scarcity, poverty and hunger. I never woke up saying, ‚I’m an orphan again today, isn’t this terrible? Poor me.‘

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

As a kid from Compton, you can get all the success in the world and still question your worth.

I was called ‚Dumbo,‘ like the elephant, as a child because I couldn’t understand things at school.

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Everything was used.

I’ve been in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus since I was 8.

If anything, I get most upset because I wanna read a good paper first thing in the morning. And if I see a lie about myself flash across the front of the cover, I don’t think much of the rest of the newspaper.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

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.

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

I’ve never known any trouble than an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.

A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.

Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.

The proper study of mankind is books.

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

Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

Temptation is just the feeling that you’re the most independent person on planet Earth. That you know everything. That’s something that we all go through as a kid. Now, this lifestyle that I’m in, the same thing exists! But it’s 10 times worse, because everything is at my disposal. When you’re in the limelight, you can get anything you want.

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

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.