Millions of students now, in all the schools of America, are reading science fiction and especially, thank God, ‚The Martian Chronicles.‘

The book you don’t read won’t help.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

Are we simply waving farewell to the days when some of the most interesting thinking in Europe and America came to us from our fiction film-makers? BBC2, which once introduced and showed great films, now shows none.

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today – but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

When you’re young, you keep reading new writers and you keep changing your mind about how you ought to sound.

I would dream. I focused all my attention on going to America. The subculture, James Dean, the rock n‘ roll, the beat writers.

Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.

But more than anything else, for the British folks Irish people were all terrorists. So when we went to Britain, it was always a lot of resistance to U2. And that’s why we came to America.

Let me tell you what I literally told every world leader I’ve met with, and I’ve met them all: It’s never, never, never been a good bet to bet against America. We have the finest fighting force in the world.

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.

Today I continue with my science-fiction reading habit and find it very mind-expanding. Always makes me think.

A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book.

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

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

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

Today we did what we had to do. They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong.

America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.

When I die, I’m leaving my body to science fiction.

America’s experience, like many others, teaches us that fostering entrepreneurship is not just about crafting the right economic policy or developing the best educated curricula. It’s about creating an entire climate in which innovation and ideas flourish.

To the man who reads ‚Scouting for Boys‘ superficially, there is a disappointing lack of religion in the book. But to him who tries it in practice, the basic religion underlying it soon becomes apparent.

If you look at ‚Blade Runner,‘ it’s been cut sixteen ways from Sunday, and there are all kinds of different versions of it.

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.

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.

America is not just a country, it’s an idea, and real Americans are getting busy.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

The spirit of America has nurtured responsibility and community unlike any other country.

I saw what happened when a dictator was allowed to take over a piece of a country and the country went down the tubes. And I saw the opposite during the war when America joined the fight.

It is not Kafka’s fault that his wonderful writings have lately turned into a fad, and are read by people who have neither the ability nor the desire to absorb literature.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

I believe with all my heart that America remains ‚the great idea‘ that inspires the world. It is a privilege to be born here. It is an honor to become a citizen here. It is a gift to raise your family here, to vote here, and to live here.

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

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

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

There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.

I will keep America moving forward, always forward, for a better America, for an endless enduring dream and a thousand Points of Light. This is my mission, and I will complete it.

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.

Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein’s general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.

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.

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

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

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

It’s very difficult to read a book on your computer.

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.

America is just downright mean.

To describe my scarce leisure time in today’s terms, I always default to reading.

If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

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

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

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

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

When I was making ‚Star Wars,‘ I wasn’t restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, ‚I’m going to create a world that’s fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it.‘

Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year and spends very little on office supplies.

Global energy security is a vital part of America’s national security.

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

The example that America knows how to govern itself is one of the compelling aspects of our national security.

In America there’s no way I can make the kind of movie I like to make.

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

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