The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

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

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

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

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

I make friends faster and easier than journalists.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.

Your friend is your needs answered.

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.

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.

There are some Christian people who taste and see and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days.

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.

When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.

There are three faithful friends – an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.

A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Burroughs is crap. Crap.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

You learn to know a pilot in a storm.

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

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

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

Alas, I am a woman friendless, hopeless!

There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that ‚Oryx and Crake‘ is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it’s neutral.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

Books are sharks… because sharks have been around for a very long time. There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.

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.

All right, then, I’ll go to hell.

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’ve actually not read any books on time management.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

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

My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.

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

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.

Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty.

We do not so much need the help of our friends as the confidence of their help in need.

I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

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

Stay active. Read the Word. Worship with other believers. Continue to give. Keep learning and growing. Your faith will be unleashed!

Even an animal, if you show genuine affection, gradually trust develops… If you always showing bad face and beating, how can you develop friendship?

I’m good friends with Jay Leno, good friends with Ed O’Neill, Melanie Fiona and Russell Simmons.

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.

Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.