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

I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

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

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

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday life.

I’ve had all six of my books reach the New York Times bestseller list, which is especially rewarding seeing as I flunked out of high school twice because I couldn’t write. It just goes to show you that we learn from our mistakes.

A boy’s story is the best that is ever told.

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

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

A home without books is a body without soul.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

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

I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer – it just happened.

For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

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

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the ‚Pilgrim’s Progress,‘ my first collection was of John Bunyan’s works in separate little volumes.

The proper study of mankind is books.

Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes‘ palaces.

I wasn’t trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of that term; somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law: Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey; I didn’t have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized allies: my people.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

Charlotte Bronte was writing about sex. I supposed Jane Austen was, too. Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

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

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

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

I got interested in reading very early, because a story was read to me, by Hans Christian Andersen, which was ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ and I don’t know if you remember ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ but it’s dreadfully sad. The little mermaid falls in love with this prince, but she cannot marry him because she is a mermaid.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

Well, if Fortune be a woman, she’s a good wench for this gear.

Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.

After you finish a book, you know, you’re dead. But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.

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

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

Those of us who can remember our childhoods will recall how ardently we relished the moment of the bedtime story, when our mother or father would sit down beside us in the semi-dark and read from a book of fairy tales.

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.

In Germany I have been acknowledged again since the fall of Hitler, but my works, partly suppressed by the Nazis and partly destroyed by the war; have not yet been republished there.

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

A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

Don Quixote’s misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I’m 100 percent fiction writer… I don’t want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don’t state my political messages to anybody.

I used to take my short stories to girls‘ homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?

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.

When I was researching my book ‚The 33 Strategies of War‘, I studied Napoleon extensively and I found myself wanting to ask Napoleon questions about things he did, and if was I interpreting his actions correctly.

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

Brevity is the soul of wit.