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

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 only written one science-fiction book: ‚Fahrenheit 451.‘ That book is a book based on real facts and my hatred of people who destroy books.

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

We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

The story as told in The Odyssey doesn’t hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.

To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I’ve got books I need to read.

The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

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

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

The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

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

I’m terrible at reading scripts. I love to read, and I hate reading scripts.

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

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?

In books lies the soul of the whole past time.

I don’t read books much.

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

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

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.

I never liked Hans Christian Andersen because I knew he was always getting at me.

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.

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

‚Discworld‘ is taking something that you know is ridiculous and treating it as if it is serious, to see if something interesting happens when you do so.

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

In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

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.

I had not expected ‚A Brief History of Time‘ to be a best seller.

No book includes the entire world. It’s limited. And so it doesn’t seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There’s so much other material to write about.

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

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.

If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.

I’ve read a lot of books on the laws of attraction, and in my home, I have a big book on Muhammad Ali, which I’ve read because he is, like, a hero of mine, but other than that, no, I’m not a big reader.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

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

I’ve loved reading all my life.

Yes, there is a terrible moral in ‚Dorian Gray‘ – a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

You can’t die with an unfinished book.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all – make us laugh, think, cry and cheer – preferably in that order.

Certainly I’m not going to sit on the Internet all day and read what Sam from Iowa is saying about me. But I’m a sponge. I’ve always been a sponge.

I wasn’t trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of that term; somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law: Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey; I didn’t have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized allies: my people.

Ebooks had to happen.

For me, a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.

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.

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

I think when people mean that Discworld books have become darker they really mean the series is growing up. In ‚The Colour of Magic‘ most of the city is set alight. It’s a joke, in much the same way that the Earth is destroyed almost at the start of Douglas Adams’s ‚The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.‘

You cannot open a book without learning something.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that’s powerful.

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

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

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

Reading isn’t good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn’t hit home runs. So I gave up reading.

The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bible, is musical, just wonderful. I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.