I like the language in Proust but not the context.

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

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

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

Shakespeare – I was very influenced – still am – by Shakespeare. I couldn’t believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.

A home without books is a body without soul.

I like definitive things.

I read a lot. I enjoy reading a lot.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

I’ve been a lot more into Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, which was a bit complicated for me to understand the language of each social media, because they all talk in different ways. It’s a nice way for me to tell people I appreciate them, which I forget to do sometimes.

I grew up reading science fiction.

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?

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

I’ve lived in a big showplace house, and I never want to live again in a house that overshadows me.

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

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read ‚Democracy in America‘ by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

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

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

I don’t know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there’s a good English phrase for it – cold war.

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

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

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.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

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

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

Language is wine upon the lips.

Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we’re probably not going to see.

No, I never thought I would like cats.

I never eat salad. I make sure I don’t put a lot of junk into my system, but I hate vegetables!

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

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.‘

Money has a language of its own.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

My favourite poem is the one that starts ‚Thirty days hath September‘ because it actually tells you something.

Dance music is no longer a simple Donna Summer beat. It’s become a whole language that I find fascinating and exciting. Eventually, it will lose the dance tag and join the fore of rock.

Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

If music be the food of love, play on.

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

If you can talk, you can write.

I like policy – call me a nerd.

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

Here’s something that’s contrary to popular belief: I actually don’t like thinking. I think people think I like to think a lot. And I don’t. I do not like to think at all.

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.

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.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

I personally don’t like to go see romantic comedies. But people do want to see them, and they seem to want to see me in them.