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.

The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That’s one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living.

All my stories are like the Greek and Roman myths, and the Egyptian myths, and the Old and New Testament.

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

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

You send a boy to school in order to make friends – the right sort.

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.

Miss a meal if you have to, but don’t miss a book.

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

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

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

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.

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

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

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.

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

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

In the real world, children love me.

There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

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.

Well, if Fortune be a woman, she’s a good wench for this gear.

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

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

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

My childhood was endless – from eight to 18 felt like hundreds of years.

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.

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

I’ve been reading tabloids since I was nine. I love a good story.

I never liked Hans Christian Andersen because I knew he was always getting at me.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

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.

I was reared in the church, in the Presbyterian Church.

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.

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.

Sixth grade was a big time, in my childhood, of hoops and friendship, and coming up with funny things.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

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

My first phone was two tin cans tied together with string, and it worked pretty good.

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

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.

My parents were divorced by the time I was even conscious – like, I don’t remember them ever being together.

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

Read a record number of books in a given month. If you’re focused on intellectual growth, train yourself to study harder and longer than ever before.

When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

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 was bullied as a boy – lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

Honestly, I think we should be delighted people still want to read, be it on a Kindle or a Nook or whatever the latest device is.

From childhood on, I did sit in the courtroom watching my father argue cases and talk to juries.

When I was a child, I was very poor and wanted everything. So when I got money, I began buying things.

Millions of students now, in all the schools of America, are reading science fiction and especially, thank God, ‚The Martian Chronicles.‘

For me, already being part of a single parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom, you’d would wake up times and hope that the next day you’d be able to be alongside your mother because she was out trying to make sure that I was taken care of. But all I cared about was her being home.

I learned to walk as a baby, and I haven’t had a lesson since.