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

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

When you pick up a book, everyone knows it’s imaginary. You don’t have to pretend it’s not a book. We don’t have to pretend that people don’t write books. That omniscient third-person narration isn’t the only way to do it. Once you’re writing in the first person, then the narrator is a writer.

Since thou are not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour.

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

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

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.

With audacity one can undertake anything, but not do everything.

When there’s so much left to do, why spend your time focusing on things you’ve already done, counting trophies or telling stories about the good old days?

I have so much that I want to do. I hate wasting time.

Moderation is the key so I work certain amount of time and then I take a certain amount of time off.

I’m always reading the next book. Taking notes. Highlighting, researching, studying. It doesn’t stop.

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

Sadly, I do my homework. I’ve a soft spot for the boring minutiae. I read the Charter of the United Nations before meeting with Kofi Annan. I read the Meltzer report, and then I’ll read C. Fred Bergsten’s defense of institutions like the World Bank and the I.M.F. It’s embarrassing to admit.

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

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

We all know we have a finite period of time. I just feel if I’m going to be alive, I want to be challenged – to be as immortal as possible. The path to that isn’t an easy way, but it’s a rewarding way.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

The moment someone asks you to do something you don’t have the time or inclination to do is fraught with vulnerability.

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

My theory on housework is, if the item doesn’t multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. Of old they spoke the languages of Men, after their own fashion, and liked and disliked much the same things as Men did. But what exactly our relationship is can no longer be discovered.

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

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

The thing most people don’t pick up when they become an entrepreneur is that it never ends. It’s 24/7.

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

I’ve been on a calendar, but I’ve never been on time.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

If you can’t read, it’s going to be hard to realize dreams.

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.

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don’t know what you’re doing.

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

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.

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.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and… the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

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.

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.

I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

My biographers… would like to have my time at the court almost complete before they finish the book. We decided… to flip the order.

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

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

Short cuts make long delays.

I’d have to be superman to do some of the things I’m supposed to have done, I’ve been at six different places at six different times.

Before beginning, plan carefully.

I spent my childhood in the country and started reading even before going to school. There was nothing else in my life but sketching and reading.

I love story songs because I’ve always loved books.

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

The proper study of mankind is books.

In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Please don’t ask me to do that which I’ve just said I’m not going to do, because you’re burning up time. The meter is running through the sand on you, and I am now filibustering.

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.

We all knew this. We all knew that it would take more time than any of us want to dig ourselves out of this hole created by this economic crisis.