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

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television – there wasn’t a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.

I don’t read ‚chick lit,‘ fantasy or science fiction but I’ll give any book a chance if it’s lying there and I’ve got half an hour to kill.

Upon books the collective education of the race depends; they are the sole instruments of registering, perpetuating and transmitting thought.

Something’s very wrong with a nation that would rather spend money on war than take care of its children.

Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring… ‚How to Build a Boat.‘

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.

Creative people don’t behave very well generally. If you’re looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you’re gonna be depressed real fast. I don’t have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She’s my first priority.

The bottom line is, when people are crystal clear about the most important priorities of the organization and team they work with and prioritized their work around those top priorities, not only are they many times more productive, they discover they have the time they need to have a whole life.

I could speak three languages when I was six, and when I went to school, I only liked to read and sketch. At five, I could write and everything.

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

You can’t move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn’t mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.

The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours – and I think probably gave me many nightmares.

Nothing is to be rated higher than the value of the day.

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

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

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.

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.

The average family spends 30 hours in front of a television, and they say they don’t have the time to have a balanced, integrated life.

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.

Riches don’t make a man rich, they only make him busier.

When I was 10 years old, I loved – I loved books, and I used to haunt the secondhand bookshop. And I found a little book I could just afford, and I bought it, and I took it home. And I climbed up my favorite tree, and I read that book from cover to cover. And that was Tarzan of the Apes. I immediately fell in love with Tarzan.

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.

If you can’t read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!

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.

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.

Women in particular need to keep an eye on their physical and mental health, because if we’re scurrying to and from appointments and errands, we don’t have a lot of time to take care of ourselves. We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‚to do‘ list.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

In books lies the soul of the whole past time.

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

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.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

I have two pairs of reading glasses. One pair is for reading fiction, the other for non-fiction. I’ve read the Bible twice wearing each pair, and it’s the same.

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.

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

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

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

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

The proper study of mankind is books.

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 don’t know what’s better gettin‘ laid or gettin‘ paid.

Writers and books are cheap dates, especially when you compare the cost of a book with a ticket to the opera – or an NHL game.

As I get older, I tend to put more into family than I used to.

What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?

It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you’re in boom times.

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.

When it comes to our everyday habits, it’s important to ask: ‚Am I putting God first?‘

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which many believe goes hand in hand with it – will be dead as well.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

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

You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.

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.