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

The book you don’t read won’t help.

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

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

The connection between psychology, mythology, and literature is as important as the connection between psychology and biology and the hard sciences.

The truest form of any form of revolutionary Left, whatever you want to call it, was Jack Kerouac, E.E. Cummings, & Ginsberg’s period. Excuse me, but that’s where it was at.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn’t that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I’d already been translating French poetry, I’d been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

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.

I dislike Allegory – the conscious and intentional allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language.

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.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

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.

A boy’s story is the best that is ever told.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

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

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I’ll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I’m crepuscular.

I specifically did not read other First Ladies‘ books, because I didn’t want to be influenced by how they defined the role. I knew that I would have to find this role – very uniquely and specifically to me and who I was.

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

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

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.

My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.

I’ve loved reading all my life.

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

I’ll tell you who I absolutely adore: Ian McEwan.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

Fantasy is uni-age. You can start it in the creche, and it follows you to death.

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

Every man lives in two realms: the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live.

A home without books is a body without soul.

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.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

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

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

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

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.

The only superstition I have is that I must start a new book on the same day that I finish the last one, even if it’s just a few notes in a file. I dread not having work in progress.

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

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this – death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

I’m tall, fat, rather bald, red-faced, double-chinned, black-haired, have a deep voice, and wear glasses for reading.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

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.

You cannot open a book without learning something.

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

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

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

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

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

I think the reason I don’t read is because, when I’m reading, I feel like I’m missing out on something else. You know, What are my friends doing? Where’s my girlfriend?

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

I’ve actually not read any books on time management.

Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.