I read poetry to save time.

Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can’t even lift them.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!

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.

My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.

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

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

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.

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

It’s not easy to define poetry.

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

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.

If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.

As for hobbies, I don’t really read or watch TV.

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

I got into science fiction by being interested in astronomy first.

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.

I’ve only written one science-fiction book: ‚Fahrenheit 451.‘ That book is a book based on real facts and my hatred of people who destroy books.

You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

The only superstition I have is that I must start a new book on the same day that I finish the last one, even if it’s just a few notes in a file. I dread not having work in progress.

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?

Hobbies are apt to run away with us, you know; it doesn’t do to be run away with. We must keep the reins.

Stand a little less between me and the sun.

I always want to create and do things, or draw.

I like the language in Proust but not the context.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

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 need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement.

The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.

Libraries raised me.

I love music, and after my first experience with movies, I can’t wait to do more.

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

I want the concentration and the romance, and the worlds all glued together, fused, glowing: have no time to waste any more on prose.

I read the ‚Old Testament‘ all the way through when I was about 13 and was horrified. A few months afterwards I read ‚The Origin Of Species‘, hallucinating very mildly because I was in bed with flu at the time. Despite that, or because of that, it all made perfect sense.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

O‘ What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

I’m always trying. Between every book, I think, ‚Well now, it’s time to get down to the serious stuff.‘

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

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

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

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

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

I’m nobody, who are you?

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

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.

I was a very keen reader of science fiction, and during the time I was going to libraries, it was good, written by people who knew their science.

I feel like I’m too busy writing history to read it.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

They might not need me; but they might. I’ll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity.

I have a nice office. I have a nice house… So I’m not denying myself some great things. I just don’t happen to have expensive hobbies.

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.