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

Now is the winter of our discontent.

A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.

I am in the world feeling my way to light ‚amid the encircling gloom.‘

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

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

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 shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.

I think I work much harder on the children’s books. I suppose I enjoy that. I find it interesting that although there are more than 30 books in the Discworld series, it is the four that were written for children which have won the awards. I’ve never been quite certain why this is.

When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart’s the last part moves, her last, the tongue.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

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

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.

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.

Burroughs is crap. Crap.

Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.

A good song never gets old.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

I don’t do Shakespeare. I don’t talk in that kind of broken English.

Instead of stubbornly attempting to use surrealism for purposes of subversion, it is necessary to try to make of surrealism something as solid, complete and classic as the works of museums.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

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

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.

This dark diction has become America’s addiction.

I’m nobody, who are you?

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.

Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.

Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

Every utopia – let’s just stick with the literary ones – faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don’t fit in?

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

The waving of a pine tree on the top of a mountain – a magic wand in Nature’s hand – every devout mountaineer knows its power; but the marvelous beauty value of what the Scotch call a breckan in a still dell, what poet has sung this?

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes‘ palaces.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

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.

I cannot live without books.

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

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

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

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

If music be the food of love, play on.

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

I am growing handsome very fast indeed! I expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year. I don’t doubt that I shall have perfect crowds of admirers at that age. Then how I shall delight to make them await my bidding, and with what delight shall I witness their suspense while I make my final decision.

I think ‚The Color Purple‘ is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.

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.

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

My musical taste and image is going to change naturally. It’s not forced; I do what comes natural to me. Sometimes, I like to be dark… other times, I like to be really light and ladylike.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don’t think so… I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.