I don’t read books much.

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

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.

I think the reason I don’t read is because, when I’m reading, I feel like I’m missing out on something else. You know, What are my friends doing? Where’s my girlfriend?

I’ve read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of ‚You Can’t Go Home Again‘ and ‚Look Homeward, Angel.‘

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.

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

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

Let us read and let us dance – two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.

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

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

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.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they’re just infested with lots of stuff.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

As for hobbies, I don’t really read or watch TV.

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

I like writing. I get cranky when I can’t. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author’s world.

I have two pairs of reading glasses. One pair is for reading fiction, the other for non-fiction. I’ve read the Bible twice wearing each pair, and it’s the same.

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.

I have a big following among the biogeeks of this world. Nobody ever puts them in books.

If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

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 discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

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.

One whose knowledge is confined to books and whose wealth is in the possession of others, can use neither his knowledge nor wealth when the need for them arises.

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

I like the language in Proust but not the context.

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

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

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

Perhaps if you are in support functions waiting on the warfighters to spell out the specifics of what you are to do, you can avoid the consequences of not reading. Those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy’s will are not allowed that luxury.

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.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me – they’re cramming for their final exam.

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

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

I’m not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.

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!

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

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.

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

I don’t know if I officially proofread my father’s book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.

No book includes the entire world. It’s limited. And so it doesn’t seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There’s so much other material to write about.

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

Books are sharks… because sharks have been around for a very long time. There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.

Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.