The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours – and I think probably gave me many nightmares.

My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.

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

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.

The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.

Little by little, not by making big promises, I need to be calmer, read more, spend more time with my loved ones, and be more mindful about nature and environment.

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

I was a very keen reader of science fiction.

The book you don’t read won’t help.

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.

I used to have nightmares that they would put ‚He played Ted‘ on my tombstone.

You cannot open a book without learning something.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do.

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible that in any profane history.

The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author’s world.

The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That’s one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living.

I have never changed my message. I preach the Bible, and I preach it with authority.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

I don’t read ‚chick lit,‘ fantasy or science fiction but I’ll give any book a chance if it’s lying there and I’ve got half an hour to kill.

I’m not well-read, but when I read, I read well.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

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.

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

Christ managed to boil down an awful lot of commandments to a few very simple rules for living. It’s when you go backwards through the ‚begats‘ and the Garden of Eden, and you start thinking, ‚Hang on, that’s a big punishment for eating one lousy apple… There’s a human-rights issue.‘

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

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

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

I think that the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin, but the Bible also teaches that pride is a sin, jealousy is a sin, and hate is a sin, evil thoughts are a sin. So I don’t think that homosexuality should be chosen as the overwhelming sin that we are doing today.

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.

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

The Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid.

The proper study of mankind is books.

Read with care, George Orwell’s diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country – we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

I spend a lot of time reading.

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

Become slower in your journey through life. Practice yoga and meditation if you suffer from ‚hurry sickness.‘ Become more introspective by visiting quiet places such as churches, museums, mountains and lakes. Give yourself permission to read at least one novel a month for pleasure.

You stay teachable most by reading books. By reading what other people went through.

The violence in the Bible is appalling.

I’ve never known any trouble than an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.

There’s a great deal to say in the Bible about the signs we’re to watch for, and when these signs all converge at one place we can be sure that we’re close to the end of the age.

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

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

‚Mystic River‘ just smelled interesting to me. So I read it and liked it right away. Even the dialogue in it was great.

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

Perhaps if you are in support functions waiting on the warfighters to spell out the specifics of what you are to do, you can avoid the consequences of not reading. Those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy’s will are not allowed that luxury.

The tablet is not mainstream. Reading off the screen is not mainstream.

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

I used to carry my father’s Bible and put it on the pulpit so he could preach.

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?

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

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.