The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.

I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books.

Guys need attention. They need that nourishment, that little stroke of the ego that gets them by every now and then.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

It’s very difficult to read a book on your computer.

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

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

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.

I don’t believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.

You cannot open a book without learning something.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

If the government ever imposes a tax on books – and I wouldn’t put it past them – I’m in dead trouble.

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

This is the first age that’s ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.

I was always making my friends laugh, but I never wanted the attention of the whole classroom.

I don’t have time to be lonely. And I get fearful of relationships because I feel guilty about wanting someone to be completely faithful and loyal, when I can’t even give them 10 percent of the attention that they need. It’s just the reality of my time, my life, my schedule.

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

Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?

The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.

It’s a fact that more people watch television and get their information that way than read books. I find new technology and new ways of communication very exciting and would like to do more in this field.

I’ve always felt like there was a lot of hype around me even when there wasn’t. I felt like everyone was talking about me even when no one was talking about me.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

I read all the time, and I’m often struck by something I’m reading.

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

I’ve got a terrible memory; it’s probably because I’m always concentrating on what I’m doing now.

You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it’s always just one person encountering the book, it’s not an audience, it’s one to one.

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

Whatever position I occupied, it was the result of colleagues – of my comrades in the movement – who had decided in their wisdom to use me for the purpose of focusing the attention of the country and the international community on me.

I’m not a nerd, don’t plan to be a nerd and read books – which I can’t do at all.

Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‚the book lady.‘ The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the ‚book lady‘ title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I’ve done something good with my life and with my success.

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

Books are alive, you see. They’re not dead, they’re alive.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

Kids are watching us. I experience it every single day. They hang on my every word, what I wear, what I say.

I don’t mind saying, you know, that I don’t take a salary from the church, and God has blessed me with more money than I could imagine from my books. It’s been printed all over, so I don’t feel like I am hiding anything.

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

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

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

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

I’ve only wanted paper and beautiful colors. It was my dream, and it still is my dream. And books. They’re all I need, and the rest I can do without.

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

My dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

I don’t know if she should worry too much, I mean some of our greatest writers have had movies made of their books, lots of Hemingway novels were turned into movies, it doesn’t hurt the book.

Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system, and that is not attention.

I like to read books. I like to listen to music.

The willingness and ability to live fully in the now eludes many people. While eating your appetizer, don’t be concerned with dessert.

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.

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

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

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.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

‚Classic.‘ A book which people praise and don’t read.

I’m honored that everybody’s inspired off my inspiration.

I love people talking about me; I love anybody just looking at me.

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

Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.

I cannot live without books.