It’s not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, ‚Read,‘ but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, ‚Don’t read, don’t think, just write,‘ and the result could be a mountain of drivel.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

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

Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it’s right, it’s easy. It’s the other way round, too. If it’s slovenly written, then it’s hard to read. It doesn’t give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader.

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

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

You can’t die with an unfinished book.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

I spent my childhood in the country and started reading even before going to school. There was nothing else in my life but sketching and reading.

I write the paragraph, then I’m crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometimes it’s almost illegible, and if I wait, I might not be able to read it the next day.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

I read a lot. I enjoy reading a lot.

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

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I’ll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I’m crepuscular.

When asked, ‚How do you write?‘ I invariably answer, ‚one word at a time.‘

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

When I say that basically writing is a hard hustle, I don’t mean that it is a bad life, if one can get away with it. It’s the miracle of miracles to make a living by the typer.

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

I never start out with any kind of connecting theme or plan. Everything just falls the way it falls. I don’t ever think about what kind of fiction I write or what I am writing about or what I am trying to write about. When I’m writing, what I do is I think about a story that I want to tell.

I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.

I don’t read books much.

The proper study of mankind is books.

Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

The tablet is not mainstream. Reading off the screen is not mainstream.

The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bible, is musical, just wonderful. I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

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

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.

I think the reason I don’t read is because, when I’m reading, I feel like I’m missing out on something else. You know, What are my friends doing? Where’s my girlfriend?

My stories run up and bite me on the leg – I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

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

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

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

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

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me – they’re cramming for their final exam.

When I’m stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.

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.

I read to my kid, but I can’t stand reading.

I grew up reading science fiction.

For people who are readers, reading is important to them.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

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?

So many writers don’t like to write… I like to write, and sometimes I’m afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don’t want to leave it. And as a result, I’ll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.

The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author’s world.

I had a period where I thought I might not be good enough to publish.

The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

I cannot live without books.

I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

When you pick up a book, everyone knows it’s imaginary. You don’t have to pretend it’s not a book. We don’t have to pretend that people don’t write books. That omniscient third-person narration isn’t the only way to do it. Once you’re writing in the first person, then the narrator is a writer.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

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.

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

I felt like I had a really bad case of writer’s block… Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can’t get it out, I start feeling bad about myself – a lot of self-loathing.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

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

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.