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 brain of feathers, and a heart of lead.

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

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.

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.

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

I do admire Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen, but I’m a philistine. I like the good life too much; I’m not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.

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.

Whatever starts in California unfortunately has an inclination to spread.

I’ve come to admire our military kids more than you all will know, because you guys are heroes. And the only way your parents are able to serve is because you guys hold it down, and you do it with maturity beyond your years.

Nothing can come of nothing.

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

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

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

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

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.

See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.

Men are what their mothers made them.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

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

Married or single, you sisters possess distinctive capabilities and special intuition you have received as gifts from God. We brethren cannot duplicate your unique influence.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name.

Hallow the body as a temple to comeliness and sanctify the heart as a sacrifice to love; love recompenses the adorers.

True wealth is not of the pocket, but of the heart and of the mind.

My mother was a powerful influence. She made me toe the line. If I didn’t have a perfect report card, she showed her disappointment.

If it weren’t for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

He who molds the public sentiment… makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.

Everything rises and falls on leadership.

People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.

I think the definition of a book is changing.

‚Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.

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.

You always admire what you really don’t understand.

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

I played Othello, but I didn’t sit around thinking how Laurence Olivier did it when he played it. That wouldn’t do me any good.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic.

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us, and not we, them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.

People that’s in power – the central banks, these fiat currencies that are traded globally – they got influence over the messaging and the narrative in the media.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

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?