The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

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

As a Western, ‚The Magnificent Seven‘ was a pretty good film. I don’t think it was as interesting or as multi-faceted as ‚Seven Samurai.‘

It’s not a coincidence that in the Scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It’s not an accident. That’s a lot of air time, 2,100 mentions.

A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

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

Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

‚Kiss Land‘ is like a horror movie.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Study men, not historians.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

I’m not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.

I rewrote the ending to ‚Farewell to Arms,‘ the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

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

Politics… have always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

But if you – if what – the reports are true, what they’re saying is, is that as a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care, at the margins that’s going to increase our costs, we knew that.

Women. They are a complete mystery.

An economist’s guess is liable to be as good as anybody else’s.

We dissect failure a lot more than we dissect success.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.

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.

The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

The thing about fantasy – there are certain things you just don’t do in fantasy.

That the divided but contiguous particles of bodies may be separated from one another is a matter of observation; and, in the particles that remain undivided, our minds are able to distinguish yet lesser parts, as is mathematically demonstrated.

We should not look at terrorism from the nameplates – which group they belong to, what is their geographical location, who are the victims. These individual groups or names will keep changing.

Maybe stories are just data with a soul.

A home without books is a body without soul.

‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

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

We should not look at terrorism from the nameplates – which group they belong to, what is their geographical location, who are the victims. These individual groups or names will keep changing. Today you are looking at the Taliban or ISIS; tomorrow you might be looking at another name.

You know, crankiness is at the essence of all comedy.

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don’t think so… I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.

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

I don’t think there’s anything unique about human intelligence.

It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. Of old they spoke the languages of Men, after their own fashion, and liked and disliked much the same things as Men did. But what exactly our relationship is can no longer be discovered.

I’ve been trying to… Having been an English literary graduate, I’ve been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.

I like the language in Proust but not the context.

I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

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.

The point – the power to hurt – of all figures lies in the truthfulness of their application.

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

Humor is the most engaging cowardice.