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

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.

Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

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

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

If literature isn’t everything, it’s not worth a single hour of someone’s trouble.

I was a very keen reader of science fiction, and during the time I was going to libraries, it was good, written by people who knew their science.

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.

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.

Reading isn’t good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn’t hit home runs. So I gave up reading.

The story as told in The Odyssey doesn’t hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

Nature is wont to hide herself.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.

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?

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever.

You’re not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.

The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

It’s a mystery. That’s the first thing that interests me about the idea of God. If there is one, it’s mysterious and powerful and awesome to even consider the concept, and you have to take it seriously.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.

The only thing wrong with the NBA – or any other professional sport, for that matter – is a wild epidemic of Dumbness and overweening Greed. There is no Mystery about it, and no need to change any rules.

I cannot live without books.

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

Well, if Fortune be a woman, she’s a good wench for this gear.

Now is the winter of our discontent.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

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.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.

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.

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.

The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

Many admire, few know.

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.

All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.

There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

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

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

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 connection between psychology, mythology, and literature is as important as the connection between psychology and biology and the hard sciences.

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

I don’t think it is so difficult to solve the problems between Cuba and the United States; it all depends on whether there is a dialogue, a discussion, or if the prejudices and hatred of people like the extremists and terrorists from the Cuban community, who try to impose their policies, prevail.

I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book.

I think when people mean that Discworld books have become darker they really mean the series is growing up. In ‚The Colour of Magic‘ most of the city is set alight. It’s a joke, in much the same way that the Earth is destroyed almost at the start of Douglas Adams’s ‚The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.‘

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

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

The actual business of writing dialogue is not thought of as a craft.

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which many believe goes hand in hand with it – will be dead as well.

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

By reading, you learn through others‘ experiences, generally, a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

The only secrets are the secrets that keep themselves.