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.

A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.

I like to read books. I like to listen to music.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

I want the reader to feel something is astonishing – not the ‚what happens‘ but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.

I have never changed my message. I preach the Bible, and I preach it with authority.

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.

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 decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books.

People ask me if there are going to be stories of Harry Potter as an adult. Frankly, if I wanted to, I could keep writing stories until Harry is a senior citizen, but I don’t know how many people would actually want to read about a 65 year old Harry still at Hogwarts playing bingo with Ron and Hermione.

Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they focus on different areas of life on earth.

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.

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

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

Sadly, I do my homework. I’ve a soft spot for the boring minutiae. I read the Charter of the United Nations before meeting with Kofi Annan. I read the Meltzer report, and then I’ll read C. Fred Bergsten’s defense of institutions like the World Bank and the I.M.F. It’s embarrassing to admit.

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

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

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.

Christ managed to boil down an awful lot of commandments to a few very simple rules for living. It’s when you go backwards through the ‚begats‘ and the Garden of Eden, and you start thinking, ‚Hang on, that’s a big punishment for eating one lousy apple… There’s a human-rights issue.‘

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

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

I think the definition of a book is changing.

My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.

It is all fiction, only autobiographical in the sense it is about a small town. None of the incidents in the book ever happened to me as a child. I didn’t have an eventful childhood.

I used to read five psalms every day – that teaches me how to get along with God. Then I read a chapter of Proverbs every day and that teaches me how to get along with my fellow man.

I’ve actually not read any books on time management.

Whatever came to mind, whatever came to hand, I would read.

If I’m honest I have to tell you I still read fairy-tales and I like them best of all.

I was walking down the street wearing glasses when the prescription ran out.

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

A home without books is a body without soul.

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

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

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.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all – make us laugh, think, cry and cheer – preferably in that order.

I’m not well-read, but when I read, I read well.

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

I’m the only person you’ve ever met who has read Longfellow.

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.

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

The people who were honored in the Bible were the false prophets. It was the ones we call the prophets who were jailed and driven into the desert.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Honestly, I think we should be delighted people still want to read, be it on a Kindle or a Nook or whatever the latest device is.

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?

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.

People who read the tabloids deserve to be lied to.

A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.

It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

I read a lot. I enjoy reading a lot.

The Bible is full of warnings about false prophets and false messiahs. These satanically inspired people have appeared in almost every generation of history.

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.

‚Classic.‘ A book which people praise and don’t read.

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