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

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

I was a chemistry major, but I’m always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I’ve brought scientific thinking to literature. There’s been very little gratitude for this.

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.

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?

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

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

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.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

I cannot claim to have had a hard time publishing.

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.

More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.

For 20 years, Simon & Schuster asked me, ‚Why don’t you write your autobiography?‘

When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

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

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.

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’m not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.

The mere brute pleasure of reading the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

When you focus on how wonderful God is and all the great things He’s done… is doing… and even will do in your life, your natural response will be praise, adoration and awe. Don’t let yourself ever get used to it… stay amazed!

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.

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

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

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

In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

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.

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

An author writes a book, and that’s the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.

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

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

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.

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.

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

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author’s world.

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

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

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

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

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 am a dangerous man when turned loose with a typewriter.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.

If the government ever imposes a tax on books – and I wouldn’t put it past them – I’m in dead trouble.

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

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

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.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

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.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

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.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

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

I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka.

Over the years, people I’ve met have often asked me what I’m working on, and I’ve usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden.

I read a lot. I enjoy reading a lot.