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

If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

The book you don’t read won’t help.

I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Happiness is just another of the tricks that our genetic system plays on us to carry out its only role, which is the survival of the species.

If I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.

It seems strange that bears, so fond of all sorts of flesh, running the risks of guns and fires and poison, should never attack men except in defense of their young. How easily and safely a bear could pick us up as we lie asleep! Only wolves and tigers seem to have learned to hunt man for food, and perhaps sharks and crocodiles.

When I was seven or eight years old, I began to read the science-fiction magazines that were brought by guests into my grandparents‘ boarding house in Waukegan, Illinois. Those were the years when Hugo Gernsback was publishing ‚Amazing Stories,‘ with vivid, appallingly imaginative cover paintings that fed my hungry imagination.

If I’m honest I have to tell you I still read fairy-tales and I like them best of all.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned… a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

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.

I probably wouldn’t have made it this far if I were a refugee.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they’re just infested with lots of stuff.

More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.

When you write your first book aged 25 or so, you have 25 years of experience, albeit much of it juvenile experience. The second book comes after an extra year sitting in bookshops. Pretty soon, you begin to run on empty.

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

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

Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it.

People who read the tabloids deserve to be lied to.

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.

We’re all caught up in circumstances, and we’re all good and evil. When you’re really hungry, for instance, you’ll do anything to survive. I think the most evil thing – well, maybe that’s too strong – but certainly a very evil thing is judgment, the sin of ignorance.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Honestly, I think we should be delighted people still want to read, be it on a Kindle or a Nook or whatever the latest device is.

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.

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.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

I read poetry to save time.

Read a record number of books in a given month. If you’re focused on intellectual growth, train yourself to study harder and longer than ever before.

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

I read about eight newspapers in a day. When I’m in a town with only one newspaper, I read it eight times.

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

I’m always trying. Between every book, I think, ‚Well now, it’s time to get down to the serious stuff.‘

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

My father was a great sympathizer of Ahad Ha’am. Every Friday night we would read Hebrew together, and often the reading was Ahad Ha’am’s essays.

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.

I have two pairs of reading glasses. One pair is for reading fiction, the other for non-fiction. I’ve read the Bible twice wearing each pair, and it’s the same.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.

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.

I could speak three languages when I was six, and when I went to school, I only liked to read and sketch. At five, I could write and everything.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

To describe my scarce leisure time in today’s terms, I always default to reading.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever. I’m not really book-smart.

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.

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

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.

Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

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.