When you read, I’m sure you don’t realize that your eyes are going backwards and forwards and to this place and that place. Mine don’t do that.

If literature isn’t everything, it’s not worth a single hour of someone’s trouble.

Some people feel affronted when something they thought to be true doesn’t happen. If that’s the case, then your sense of risk is much higher, and that leads to risk aversion. You need to be able to be comfortable in uncertainty.

The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

It takes a smart man to play dumb.

I’m tall, fat, rather bald, red-faced, double-chinned, black-haired, have a deep voice, and wear glasses for reading.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil.

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.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Each doctor makes a much, much more important job than I do, but at the end, nobody talks about him. We all know about it, but we don’t really think about it.

Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.

Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can’t even lift them.

Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.

Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

When the mind is empty, silent, when it is in a state of complete negation – which is not blankness, nor the opposite of being positive, but a totally different state in which all thought has ceased – only then is it possible for that which is unnameable to come into being.

We must do everything in our power to cease the behaviour that makes children everywhere feel afraid.

I like gaps; all my stories have gaps. It seems this is the way people’s lives present themselves.

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?

Reality is a sliding door.

I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.

He who lives in our mind is near though he may actually be far away; but he who is not in our heart is far though he may really be nearby.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

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.

Some men do think I’m a psycho bunny-boiler.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

If you change and adapt your persona, you are seen as inauthentic; if you stay the angry young man, you fade from attention or seem tiresome.

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

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

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

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

Our present moment is a mystery that we are part of. Here and now is where all the wonder of life lies hidden. And make no mistake about it, to strive to live completely in the present is to strive for what already is the case.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

But to me nothing – the negative, the empty – is exceedingly powerful.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

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.

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

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

There’s no way to remove the observer – us – from our perceptions of the world.

I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and ocean in the world, were united to support me in the task to which I have now been dedicated with such solemnity.

Perhaps if you are in support functions waiting on the warfighters to spell out the specifics of what you are to do, you can avoid the consequences of not reading. Those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy’s will are not allowed that luxury.

These days, children can text on their cell phone all night long, and no one else is seeing that phone. You don’t know who is calling that child.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

I don’t think there is a single social issue I haven’t spoken on.

I just feel like, with rappers, there’s so much complacency. It’s like, ‚Oh, I’m a rapper. I’m successful. I make money. That’s all that matters.‘ But there’s a lot of stuff going on in the world. Whether or not you’re aware of it, it’s happening.

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

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

Funny thing is that the poorer people are, the more generous they seem to be.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

Words are more powerful than some noises. Noises won’t last long. Lyrics are so important, and people don’t realise that.

The movement of search can only be from the known to the known, and all that the mind can do is to be aware that this movement will never uncover the unknown. Any movement on the part of the known is still within the field of the known.

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