I have trouble reading modern Hebrew. In the 1950s, I could read anything. I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with contemporary Hebrew. It’s quite difficult.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

Old age is just a record of one’s whole life.

In a certain way, it’s the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

Substitute ‚damn‘ every time you’re inclined to write ‚very‘; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that’s powerful.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

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.

God cannot be realized through the intellect. Intellect can lead one to a certain extent and no further. It is a matter of faith and experience derived from that faith.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?

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.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

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

Libraries raised me.

To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I’ve got books I need to read.

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.

You can stroke people with words.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

I worked with Lawrence Olivier some years ago. He was a great mentor.

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

I’ve actually taken companies public, I’ve actually busted companies, I’ve actually gone broke.

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

The mere brute pleasure of reading the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

I’ve proved to be as difficult to convert as I am to hypnotize.

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.

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

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

I’m not a nerd, don’t plan to be a nerd and read books – which I can’t do at all.

I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.

To the man who reads ‚Scouting for Boys‘ superficially, there is a disappointing lack of religion in the book. But to him who tries it in practice, the basic religion underlying it soon becomes apparent.

Lettin‘ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier ‚n puttin‘ it back in.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

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

I want to – more than anything – to create a moment that people will never forget. Not for me, but for themselves. That’s what I remember about great Super Bowl performances in the past, when you really get lost in the moment with your family.

My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring still.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

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.

I don’t concern myself with award. I’d been to the party enough times to know it really didn’t matter.

When you write your first book aged 25 or so, you have 25 years of experience, albeit much of it juvenile experience. The second book comes after an extra year sitting in bookshops. Pretty soon, you begin to run on empty.

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

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.

No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.

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.

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

Being a good husband is like being a good stand-up comic – you need ten years before you can even call yourself a beginner.

I’ve 20,000 hours of clinical practice; you’re not naive after the first few thousand. I’ve helped people deal with things that most people can’t imagine.

Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.