My favourite poem is the one that starts ‚Thirty days hath September‘ because it actually tells you something.

Burroughs is crap. Crap.

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

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

A home without books is a body without soul.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

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

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

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

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

I spend a lot of time reading.

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

Barack Obama did tell me that I was one of Michelle Obama’s favorite actors.

Miss a meal if you have to, but don’t miss a book.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

I grew up reading science fiction.

I love a good Dorothy L. Sayers.

Whatever came to mind, whatever came to hand, I would read.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

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.

A live concert to me is exciting because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage. It’s my favorite part of the business, live concerts.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

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

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

Look at a book. A book is the right size to be a book. They’re solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book. You can find your place in microseconds. Books are really good at being books, and no matter what happens, books will survive.

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

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

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

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

We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print.

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

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

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.

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

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

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

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

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.

Now is the winter of our discontent.

I love sleep; it’s my favorite.

I am not a fan of books.

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

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

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

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

I used to take my short stories to girls‘ homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?

I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire.

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

All right, then, I’ll go to hell.

I have never sat down and studied the Bible, never consciously echoed its language, and am, in reality, as ignorant of it as most brought-up Christians. All of the Bible that I use in my work is remembered from childhood and is the common property of all who were brought up in English-speaking communities.