With all of their benefits, and there are many, one of the things I regret about e-books is that they have taken away the necessity of trawling foreign bookshops or the shelves of holiday houses to find something to read. I’ve come across gems and stinkers that way, and both can be fun.

If you want to go somewhere, it is best to find someone who has already been there.

I think the reason I don’t read is because, when I’m reading, I feel like I’m missing out on something else. You know, What are my friends doing? Where’s my girlfriend?

The balloons only have one life and the only way of finding out whether they work is to attempt to fly around the world.

I’ve just always been a reader.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it’s always just one person encountering the book, it’s not an audience, it’s one to one.

I was a very keen reader of science fiction.

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.

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

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

I got into science fiction by being interested in astronomy first.

I don’t think there is anything wrong in earning money from the sport you love. If you work hard and get benefits from it, there is no harm. The day you feel that you are not working hard and are only looking at the benefits, that’s where the problem is.

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

I’ve been everywhere in the world, seen everything, had everything a man can have.

I’m the same kid who used to hop the trains with headphones and just go to downtown Manhattan, walk around and listen to music or walk through the city. The fame restricts that. It’s a small complaint in comparison to the benefits I get from it, but the restrictive part is what I don’t like – and the fact that it’s not reversible.

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

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.

To be able to travel the world, especially to places I never thought I’d be… it’s really, you know, still fascinating for me.

My message, especially to young people is to have courage to think differently, courage to invent, to travel the unexplored path, courage to discover the impossible and to conquer the problems and succeed. These are great qualities that they must work towards. This is my message to the young people.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

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

Hong Kong is a wonderful, mixed-up town where you’ve got great food and adventure. First and foremost, it’s a great place to experience China in a relatively accessible way.

If you’re totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.

The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author’s world.

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

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

It is not Kafka’s fault that his wonderful writings have lately turned into a fad, and are read by people who have neither the ability nor the desire to absorb literature.

Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.

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

We’ve climbed the mighty mountain. I see the valley below, and it’s a valley of peace.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.

I’ve been here before and will come again, but I’m not going this trip through.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

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

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.

I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.

Yeah, I like to keep myself interested – I’ll kind of throw myself into some area that I don’t completely know or understand, that I’m not adept at, so I’m forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There’s a good feeling that comes from that.

Adventure is worthwhile in itself.

I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books.

The only superstition I have is that I must start a new book on the same day that I finish the last one, even if it’s just a few notes in a file. I dread not having work in progress.

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.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.

The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

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.

Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.