In books lies the soul of the whole past time.

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

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

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.

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

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

I like to read books. I like to listen to music.

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

Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, I must have read a whole library.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

Become slower in your journey through life. Practice yoga and meditation if you suffer from ‚hurry sickness.‘ Become more introspective by visiting quiet places such as churches, museums, mountains and lakes. Give yourself permission to read at least one novel a month for pleasure.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

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

Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the soul feeds the body, so God gives food to the world.

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.

Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

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

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

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

Brevity is the soul of wit.

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.

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.

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

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

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

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.

Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless without it.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

‚Discworld‘ is taking something that you know is ridiculous and treating it as if it is serious, to see if something interesting happens when you do so.

It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. Of old they spoke the languages of Men, after their own fashion, and liked and disliked much the same things as Men did. But what exactly our relationship is can no longer be discovered.

I don’t read ‚chick lit,‘ fantasy or science fiction but I’ll give any book a chance if it’s lying there and I’ve got half an hour to kill.

The challenge for me as an actor is if you become a celebrity, you don’t meet strangers anymore. And strangers are where we have our anonymity. And I believe it’s essential for the soul to be anonymous, especially if you’re going to be an actor.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

I don’t believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.

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.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.

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.

I’m sure most parents read to their children to explain what certain things mean. So books are a good way to convey a message to anybody. Everybody reads.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

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

The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body.

I try to read as much as I can. I try to read an informative article every day. I try to stay read up on our world issues.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

I’ve only wanted paper and beautiful colors. It was my dream, and it still is my dream. And books. They’re all I need, and the rest I can do without.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

If you can’t read, it’s going to be hard to realize dreams.

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

Lord, help my poor soul.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.