I had not expected ‚A Brief History of Time‘ to be a best seller.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

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

Books are alive, you see. They’re not dead, they’re alive.

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.

People look to time in expectation that it will eventually make them happy, but you cannot find true happiness by looking toward the future.

You stay teachable most by reading books. By reading what other people went through.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever.

You don’t read in your own field. You read in that field when you’re young, so that you can learn.

Society has always to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.

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.

How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

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.

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.

If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.

When I came to Delhi and noticed an insider view, I felt what it was, and I was surprised to see it. It seemed as if dozens of separate governments are running at the same time in one main government. It appeared that everyone has its own fiefdom.

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.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.

How to drive a guy crazy: send him a telegram and on the top put ‚page 2.‘

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.

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.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

Many people feel so pressured by the expectations of others that it causes them to be frustrated, miserable and confused about what they should do. But there is a way to live a simple, joy-filled, peaceful life, and the key is learning how to be led by the Holy Spirit, not the traditions or expectations of man.

If it’s all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it’s all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that’s it. You’re not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You’re not going to read that book again.

I try to do something the audience might not have seen before. Like if I’m gonna kiss a girl I wanna kiss her like a girl has never been kissed. Like maybe I would kick her legs out from under her and catch her right before she hits the ground and then kiss her.

The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

I cannot read a single word of the Hindoos without being elevated.

I specifically did not read other First Ladies‘ books, because I didn’t want to be influenced by how they defined the role. I knew that I would have to find this role – very uniquely and specifically to me and who I was.

I don’t read ‚chick lit,‘ fantasy or science fiction but I’ll give any book a chance if it’s lying there and I’ve got half an hour to kill.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

I read a lot. I enjoy reading a lot.

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.

Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can’t even lift them.

The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours – and I think probably gave me many nightmares.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, ‚Nobody under 40,‘ or ‚Nobody under 25.‘ With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is ‚reader.‘

I fully understand the expectations of the state governments. Thus, I am better placed to work closely with the chief ministers.

It’s a fact that more people watch television and get their information that way than read books. I find new technology and new ways of communication very exciting and would like to do more in this field.

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

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.

My first popular book, ‚A Brief History of Time,‘ aroused a great deal of interest, but many found it difficult to understand.

Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?

In the dime stores and bus stations, people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall.

When I put out ‚Video Games‘ in May 2011, it was a 5:25-minute love song; I was surprised when a lot of people said they were listening to it. I was surprised when it went to the radio, without me even knowing how something like that even happens!

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 read a lot when I’m travelling and always have a couple of books on the go.

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

When I was 10 years old, I loved – I loved books, and I used to haunt the secondhand bookshop. And I found a little book I could just afford, and I bought it, and I took it home. And I climbed up my favorite tree, and I read that book from cover to cover. And that was Tarzan of the Apes. I immediately fell in love with Tarzan.

Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport.

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?

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

I read the ‚Old Testament‘ all the way through when I was about 13 and was horrified. A few months afterwards I read ‚The Origin Of Species‘, hallucinating very mildly because I was in bed with flu at the time. Despite that, or because of that, it all made perfect sense.

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.

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.

In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind – in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.