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

David Icke reminded me of Malcolm X.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

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.

You just want something else that someone else has, but that doesn’t mean what you have isn’t beautiful, because people always want what you have, and you always want what they have – no one is ever 100 per cent like, ‚Yes, I’m the bomb dot com – from head to toe!‘

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

Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.

Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

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.

That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

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

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock and roll or Christianity.

In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

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

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

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

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

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

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

One word from the Lord is like a piece of gold to a believer, who is like a jeweler, shaping and hammering out the promise for a number of weeks.

Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.

Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?

Read with care, George Orwell’s diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

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

As I see it, fast food outfits have targeted small children with their advertising in a very effective way. You know, it’s clowns and kid’s toys and bright colors and things like that.

A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss.

I cannot live without books.

‚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’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.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

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

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.

Life would pall if it were all sugar; salt is bitter if taken by itself; but when tasted as part of the dish, it savours the meat. Difficulties are the salt of life.

In the past there were people who were not rich but contented with their living style, laughing and happy all day. But when the new rich people appear, people look at them and ask, ‚why don’t I have a life like that too, a beautiful house, car and garden,‘ and they abandon their values.

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

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.

Unlike many of its European neighbors, Britain shares many of America’s financial traits.

‚Kiss Land‘ is like a horror movie.

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.

Burroughs is crap. Crap.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

Shakespeare – I was very influenced – still am – by Shakespeare. I couldn’t believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

I read a lot. I enjoy reading a lot.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

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

I like to talk about lint and coasters, the expansion of the universe and maybe McDonald’s. I’m completely turned off by the idea of politics.

Particularly Instagram, people look like they have a much better life than they really do. People basically seem like they are way better-looking than they really are, and they are way happier-seeming than they really are.

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

I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire.

A boy’s story is the best that is ever told.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.