I can’t tell you the number of times I looked down at what was going on on the ground, or I was engaged in a fight somewhere, and I knew within a couple of minutes how I was going to screw up the enemy. And I knew it because I’d done so much reading.

It is true that the king has made a truce with the duke of Burgundy for fifteen days and that the duke is to turn over the city of Paris at the end of fifteen days. Yet you should not marvel if I do not enter that city so quickly.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

Solutions are not the answer.

Posture for combat is so vital.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

The female loves to play man against man. And if she is in a position to do it, there is not one who will resist.

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

If the government ever imposes a tax on books – and I wouldn’t put it past them – I’m in dead trouble.

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.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

Most people don’t like change. They revolt against it unless they can clearly see the advantage it brings. For that reason, when good leaders prepare to take action or make changes, they take people through a process to get them ready for it.

I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.

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.

The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and never have another.

Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don’t go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you.

Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.

I began playing Monopoly for real when I was 26 years old. Today, my wife and I have approximately 1,400 little green houses – each paying us monthly. You do not have to be a rocket scientist or have a Harvard degree to play Monopoly for real.

Wherever the enemy wants to fight, we will follow him to the ends of the Earth. We’ll adapt, we’ll train, we’ll advise, we’ll mentor, and we’ll fight, and we’ll fight well.

I think the definition of a book is changing.

My mother insisted that her children read.

There are different ways to do innovation. You can plant a lot of seeds, not be committed to any particular one of them, but just see what grows. And this really isn’t how we’ve approached this. We go mission-first, then focus on the pieces we need and go deep on them and be committed to them.

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.

Reading isn’t good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn’t hit home runs. So I gave up reading.

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.

My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.

It’s a juicy thing to say we’re building a phone, which is why people want to write about it. But it’s so clearly the wrong strategy for us.

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.

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

Mostly, my flying has been solo, but the preparation for it wasn’t. Without my husband’s help and encouragement, I could not have attempted what I have. Ours has been a contented and reasonable partnership, he with his solo jobs and I with mine. But always with work and play together, conducted under a satisfactory system of dual control.

To describe my scarce leisure time in today’s terms, I always default to reading.

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, I must have read a whole library.

People who read the tabloids deserve to be lied to.

Everybody that’s successful lays a blueprint out.

No foreign policy – no matter how ingenious – has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

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

The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.

I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.

We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.

A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.

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.

It’s not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, ‚Read,‘ but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, ‚Don’t read, don’t think, just write,‘ and the result could be a mountain of drivel.

Some of the generals are saying, ‚We’re making progress. We are clearing an area.‘ But you really don’t defeat the Taliban by clearing an area. They move.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which many believe goes hand in hand with it – will be dead as well.

I spent my childhood in the country and started reading even before going to school. There was nothing else in my life but sketching and reading.

When we have the ball, the other team has to run. The most important thing is for the players to be prepared to be a little bit wild.

At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

When I started analysing games in 2001, I had a DVD recorder. I’d be at home watching the games just on a normal TV, watching what I could and trying to figure out what we would be facing a few weeks later. The problem was, in the team meetings, I’d always have to keep going back and forwards with the footage, trying to get to the right part.

Oh yes. I’m an actor, so I just learn my lines, and show up and do it. I gave it a little bit of thought.

War – An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.