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

My brain and body and nervous system, they see a plane ride, a long plane trip, as an opportunity to sleep with nothing coming in, nothing to do. I just go offline the minute I’m on the plane.

In everything, satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

I don’t believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.

Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about ‚Wind in the Willows‘ and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought – you know about ‚The Wind in the Willows.‘

Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless without it.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

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.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

There’s no substitute for the practice of meditation.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

I first found delight in the Sabbath many years ago when, as a busy surgeon, I knew that the Sabbath became a day for personal healing. By the end of each week, my hands were sore from repeatedly scrubbing them with soap, water, and a bristle brush. I also needed a breather from the burden of a demanding profession.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

Read a record number of books in a given month. If you’re focused on intellectual growth, train yourself to study harder and longer than ever before.

I do things I love doing. Sometimes that is maybe going out to have a drink with friends, going out partying or whatever.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

Nobody enjoys the ‚little show about nothing‘ humor more than me, but that is never the way I look at it.

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.

It’s an offseason. These days are valuable for everybody.

Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

I’ve enjoyed all the parts of my career.

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

I love a Hebrew National hot dog with an ice-cold Corona – no lime. If the phone rings, I won’t answer until I’m done.

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

It’s very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.

I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

I have been practicing archery for a long time; a bow and arrow helps me to unwind.

I would always want printed books.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

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.

I’d like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that’s not just e-mail with a view.

I like surprises.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

I think the definition of a book is changing.

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 love the sea.

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.

I love to put on lotion. Sometimes I’ll watch TV and go into a lotion trance for an hour. I try to find brands that don’t taste bad in case anyone wants to taste me.

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

I had a good time boxing. I enjoyed it – and I may come back.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

I don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

I don’t care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

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

You can be passionate about anything.

I play piano every day. I enjoy that.

Hmm, on my downtime, I take a shower or listen to the Bible on tape.

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

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.

Hobbies are apt to run away with us, you know; it doesn’t do to be run away with. We must keep the reins.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

I love great journalism. I appreciate it. I love a good, you know, I love good news stories. I love great books. I love great articles. I appreciate them so much, and they’ve been part of my education as a woman.

I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.