Well, if Fortune be a woman, she’s a good wench for this gear.

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

‚Tis better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

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?

I don’t do Shakespeare. I don’t talk in that kind of broken English.

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

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

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

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.

Diligence is the mother of good fortune.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

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

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.

My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.

Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife.

Books are alive, you see. They’re not dead, they’re alive.

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.

I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

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.

I read a lot. I enjoy reading a lot.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

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

O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

Alfred Hitchcock once told me, when I was analyzing a lot of things about his pictures, ‚Clint, you must remember, it’s only a movie.‘

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever.

I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read ‚Democracy in America‘ by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

I bear a charmed life.

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

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

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

Language is wine upon the lips.

Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.

I like the language in Proust but not the context.

Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.

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

Though she be but little, she is fierce.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

A great fortune is a great slavery.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

You can’t keep your mind on fighting when you’re thinking about a woman. You can’t keep your concentration. You feel like sleeping all the time.

Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the ‚Pilgrim’s Progress,‘ my first collection was of John Bunyan’s works in separate little volumes.

I was a chemistry major, but I’m always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I’ve brought scientific thinking to literature. There’s been very little gratitude for this.

To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.