Whatever came to mind, whatever came to hand, I would read.

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

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

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.

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

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.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

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.‘

I feel like I’m too busy writing history to read it.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

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

I’ve done auditions where the casting director is taking the paper out of my hand in the middle of reading.

After you finish a book, you know, you’re dead. But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.

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.

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

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

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

I would always want printed books.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

‚Recreative‘ is a word that I invented because in urban culture, with colloquialism, we invent so many slangs. I don’t like the way that ‚recreational‘ sounds – I don’t like to say I do a lot of ‚recreational‘ reading. I like to say that I read ‚recreatively.‘ I do a lot of ‚recreative‘ reading.

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

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, ‚Nobody under 40,‘ or ‚Nobody under 25.‘ With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is ‚reader.‘

The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That’s one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living.

More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.

I am not a fan of books.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.

I cannot read a single word of the Hindoos without being elevated.

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.

If music be the food of love, play on.

I’ve just always been a reader.

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

I read the ‚Old Testament‘ all the way through when I was about 13 and was horrified. A few months afterwards I read ‚The Origin Of Species‘, hallucinating very mildly because I was in bed with flu at the time. Despite that, or because of that, it all made perfect sense.

If you can’t read, it’s going to be hard to realize dreams.

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.

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.

You’re not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.

I rewrote the ending to ‚Farewell to Arms,‘ the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

My favourite poem is the one that starts ‚Thirty days hath September‘ because it actually tells you something.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

I just feel that ‚The Color Purple,‘ which was my 10th book, was a true gift from my ancestors.

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.

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

I read a lot. I enjoy reading a lot.

A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.

Charlotte Bronte was writing about sex. I supposed Jane Austen was, too. Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

I got interested in reading very early, because a story was read to me, by Hans Christian Andersen, which was ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ and I don’t know if you remember ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ but it’s dreadfully sad. The little mermaid falls in love with this prince, but she cannot marry him because she is a mermaid.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.