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 book you don’t read won’t help.

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

I’ve used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I’ve still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.

I had this dream to become a writer since I was a teenager.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

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.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

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.

I practiced drawing all the time and became very interested in it. If I was at a meeting that wasn’t getting anywhere – like the one where Carl Rogers came to Caltech to discuss with us whether Caltech should develop a psychology department – I would draw the other people.

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

I don’t read books much.

Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring… ‚How to Build a Boat.‘

I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.

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.

Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.

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

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bible, is musical, just wonderful. I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

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

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.

You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.

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

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

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

Money is an unavoidable consequence, but it isn’t the reason I write; if it was, I wouldn’t have written any of the YA books, because advances in that field are small compared to what I’d got now for an ‚adult‘ DW.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

Dancers are always striving for perfection. A great dancer never achieves it: you always want to do another turn, a higher jump,a more difficult acrobatic jump.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‚first chapters‘. I have indeed written many.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

Certainly I’m not going to sit on the Internet all day and read what Sam from Iowa is saying about me. But I’m a sponge. I’ve always been a sponge.

I always say the strength of democracy lies in criticism. If there is no criticism, that means there is no democracy. And if you want to grow, you must invite criticism. And I want to grow; I want to invite criticism.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

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?

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.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

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

I try to read as much as I can. I try to read an informative article every day. I try to stay read up on our world issues.

I think it does Discworld good if I don’t write about it all the time: sometimes you have to get it out of your system.

You’ve got to invest in the world, you’ve got to read, you’ve got to go to art galleries, you’ve got to find out the names of plants. You’ve got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We’re amazing people.

A chorus is not easy.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

The U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world.

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

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

He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

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 think our democracy has it exactly right: two terms, eight years. It’s enough. Because it’s important to have one foot in reality when you have access to this kind of power.

In a democracy, in a functioning democracy, what would be happening is that popular organizations, unions, political groupings, others would be developing their programs, putting them forth, insisting that their representatives implement those programs.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

I’m looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

There’s a lot of fuss on the Left about election irregularities, like, you know, the voting machines were tampered with, they didn’t count the votes right, and so on. That’s all accurate and of some importance, but of far more importance is the fact that elections just don’t take place, not in any meaningful sense of the term ‚election.‘

It’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.

I had my jazz club and I had enough money. So I didn’t have to write for my living.