I haven’t read Horowitz. I didn’t used to read him when he was a Stalinist, and I don’t read him today.

It cannot be said often enough that science fiction as a genre is incredibly educational – and I’m speaking the written science fiction, not ‚Star Trek.‘ Science fiction writers tend to fill their books if they’re clever with little bits of interesting stuff and real stuff.

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

If anything, I get most upset because I wanna read a good paper first thing in the morning. And if I see a lie about myself flash across the front of the cover, I don’t think much of the rest of the newspaper.

I read poetry to save time.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

When I write a book, I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader. It’s not my business whether people like or dislike it.

Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

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

I never liked Hans Christian Andersen because I knew he was always getting at me.

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

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

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.

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

I still have my unemployment books and I remember when I worked for the sanitation department and the post office.

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.

I am not a fan of books.

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

‚Mystic River‘ just smelled interesting to me. So I read it and liked it right away. Even the dialogue in it was great.

I read all the time, and I’m often struck by something I’m reading.

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 fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

I’m not a writer who teaches. I’m a teacher who writes.

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

My father was a great sympathizer of Ahad Ha’am. Every Friday night we would read Hebrew together, and often the reading was Ahad Ha’am’s essays.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

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

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

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

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

Writers and books are cheap dates, especially when you compare the cost of a book with a ticket to the opera – or an NHL game.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

I’ve never known any trouble than an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.

I’ll tell you who I absolutely adore: Ian McEwan.

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

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

My favorite book is anything by Kurt Vonnegut – he’s my literary hero. I got to meet him several times, which was a great thrill for me. I don’t really remember what we talked about.

It’s very difficult to read a book on your computer.

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.

The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bible, is musical, just wonderful. 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.

When you’re young, you keep reading new writers and you keep changing your mind about how you ought to sound.

I didn’t want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that’s a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I’m proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

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

Certainly I’m not going to sit on the Internet all day and read what Sam from Iowa is saying about me. But I’m a sponge. I’ve always been a sponge.

I’ve just finished my 20th book this past year and I’m working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I’ll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I’m an artist too.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.

Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about ‚Wind in the Willows‘ and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought – you know about ‚The Wind in the Willows.‘

I love story songs because I’ve always loved books.

Just be a cool grandpa who’s creative, and hang out and tell stories and read a book in the library.

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

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

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

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