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

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

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

It is all fiction, only autobiographical in the sense it is about a small town. None of the incidents in the book ever happened to me as a child. I didn’t have an eventful childhood.

I’ve actually not read any books on time management.

I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

It’s probably not an accident that the films that I care about happen to be about issues that matter to me, stories that I want to tell.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

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

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Naturally, my stories are about women – I’m a woman. I don’t know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I’m not always sure what is meant by ‚feminist.‘ In the beginning, I used to say, ‚Well, of course I’m a feminist.‘ But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I’m not.

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

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

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

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 am not a fan of books.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

It’s easy to make an album full of great songs. But I want people to go for the ride. The songs have to make sense together.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

I’m not searching for hard news; I’m not a journalist, but I’m interested in pushing to boundaries of where we can do the kind of stories that we want to do. I mean, it’s a big world and CNN has made it a lot bigger and they haven’t flinched.

I’m a fantasy writer, called a fantasy writer. But there’s very little, apart from one or two basic concepts in ‚I Shall Wear Midnight,‘ which are in fact fantasy. You have sticks that fly, but they’re practical broomsticks, with a bloody great strap that you can hold on to so you don’t fall off. And you try not to use them too often.

On one occasion, I accompanied my father to Pinares de Mayari. I was eight or nine years old. How he enjoyed talking when he left the house in Biran! There he was the proprietor of the land where sugar cane, pasture, and other agricultural crops were planted.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

I spend a lot of time reading.

I love stories about women.

People are generally proud of their food. A willingness to eat and drink with people without fear and prejudice… they open up to you in ways that somebody visiting who is driven by a story may not get.

Journalism makes you think fast. You have to speak to people in all walks of life. Especially local journalism.

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

But I think we’re also just talking about the literacy of the audience. The visual literacy of the audience. They’ve seen so many images now, especially here in the States. There’s so much to look at, to watch. So the visual storytelling literacy is harder to impress.

For me, ‚risky‘ is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.

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

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.

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 Joker that Christopher Nolan created in ‚The Dark Knight‘ had the scar across his mouth, and the first time you heard his explanation for it, he makes you believe that’s how he got it. But then you get into the film, and every time he talks about his scar, it’s a totally different story.

Fantasy is uni-age. You can start it in the creche, and it follows you to death.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

My fans don’t feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I’m going through now, they’ll hear about it on a record someday. They’ll hear the real story. There’s a little bit of lag time. It’s not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it’s much more accurate.

People ask me if there are going to be stories of Harry Potter as an adult. Frankly, if I wanted to, I could keep writing stories until Harry is a senior citizen, but I don’t know how many people would actually want to read about a 65 year old Harry still at Hogwarts playing bingo with Ron and Hermione.

In a novel you have to resist the urge to tell everything.

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

This whole phenomenon of the computer in a library is an amazing thing.

I can’t tell you the number of times I looked down at what was going on on the ground, or I was engaged in a fight somewhere, and I knew within a couple of minutes how I was going to screw up the enemy. And I knew it because I’d done so much reading.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

When I was a kid, I read the science-fiction shelves, and I read the fantasy shelves.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

In Japan they prefer the realistic style. They like answers and conclusions, but my stories have none. I want to leave them wide open to every possibility. I think my readers understand that openness.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

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

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

I have definitely been curious and involved in the process; even as a young actor. I was always looking at where the camera was, what story it was telling. And as my experience grew, I wanted to know even more.

I’ve learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you’d talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.

‚Classic.‘ A book which people praise and don’t read.

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

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

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.

With all of their benefits, and there are many, one of the things I regret about e-books is that they have taken away the necessity of trawling foreign bookshops or the shelves of holiday houses to find something to read. I’ve come across gems and stinkers that way, and both can be fun.