There is something fascinatingly awkward about an author photo. I’m drawn to those glossy shots in the back of books, mostly because the subjects never look happy to be there.

You make me love books and the words inside them, because they talk about you. I know they do, they tell me that I love you, not as cliché as I write it, but in...

Ten minutes of careful searching later, Maelyn faced the dismal truth – she was bookless.

I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.

The world was hers for the reading.

What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb.American novels, answered Lord Henry.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistake of our...

When answering questions over the years about film and TV adaptations of my books, I have always maintained that no movie or TV series could ever change or damage my work.

Writers don’t write writing, they write reading. When I was a kid, I read four or five books a week. And that is how I became a writer.

I suppose most crime writing is urban. There’s not a lot… certainly not in Australia, people don’t often set books in the countryside.

My ears become my conduit to the world. In the darkness I listen—to thrillers, to detective novels, to romances; to family sagas, potboilers and historical novels; to ghost stories and classic fiction and chick lit;...

I took up a sort of a hobby of just hanging around the local library. I’d pick out an author and I would read all their books.

And sometimes, when the stars are kind, we read with an intake of breath, with a shudder, as if someone or something had ‘walked over our grave,’ as if a memory had suddenly been rescued...

The library was one more essential in the parade of rooms in a big 18th-century house – and part of the required kit ever afterwards. The important thing was to have the books, not actually...

The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political...

I wear glasses, and maybe you do, too. Mine probably cost about the same as yours. Would you trade lenses with me just because I asked you to? Of course not!That would be silly because...

The atmosphere of my faith brightens with every Christ-centered book I read.

An hour spent reading is one stolen from paradise.

My brother and I were able to fantasize far more extravagantly about our parents’ tastes and desires, their aspirations and their vices, by scanning their bookcases than by snooping in their closest. Their selves were...

The public library is where place and possibility meet.

But believe it or not, I really do like to read. I don’t think anyone can ever pull the wool over your eyes if you stay prayed up and read. Frederick Douglass said that no...

And that’s why books are never going to die. It’s impossible. It’s the only time we really go into the mind of a stranger, and we find our common humanity doing this. So the book...

I read nonfiction.”She reared back as if offended.

Books whose topics I thoroughy depsise are accapteble because they often force the reader to think and to examine his own beliefs. In an age where most people are either blindly obedient or radical, exposing...

Writers had a way of redeeming everything that ever happens to them.

I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print, the way you crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful big green fig-tree.

I travel because it makes me realize how much I haven’t seen, how much I’m not going to see, and how much I still need to see.

I would hate to die for a lot of reasons. But mostly because of all the books I haven’t yet read.

She was addicted to literature like some people were addicted to heroin.

John Armato, a Public relations executive, cherishes his growing Library of Candidates. When people ask him if he’s actually read all those books, he asks them if they’ve actually eaten all the food in their...

The minutes ticked past. This is why peelers need a book. A wee paperback to stick in your pocket.

I prefer the company of books. When I’m reading, I’m never alone, I have a conversation with the book. It can be very intimate. Perhaps you know this feeling yourself? The sense that you’re having...

Through books I discovered everything to be loved, explored, visited, communed with. I was enriched and given all the blueprints to a marvelous life, I was consoled in adversity, I was prepared for both joys...

Quiet people have the loudest minds.

She read her way around the library, hungry for journeys, adventures, laughter and passion. She took each new book to bed like a lover, savouring every chapter, going too far some nights until the letters...

I came to one of the first Comic Cons in 1985, when it was just people trading back issues of comic books.

Don’t mark up the Library’s copy, you fool! Librarians are Unprankable. They’ll track you down! They have skills!

Morris tried to keep the books in some sort of order, but they always mixed themselves up. The tragedies needed cheering up and would visit with the comedies. The encyclopedias, weary of facts, would relax...

It’s difficult to quantify precisely the effect of books on our lives – but generally speaking, it’s enormous.

Ending a series is a difficult one …….where should a story that you have followed for so long end? When do you step away from the characters and let the readers decide their fate from...

Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand.

The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. If this...

Edward genially enough did not disagree with what I said, but he didn’t seem to admit my point, either. I wanted to press him harder so I veered close enough to the ad hominem to...

That’s my point: if you own thirty or more books, or you are reading any book at this moment, you may protest all you want, but you were born on the wrong continent.

Beyond all vanities, fights, and desires, omnipotent silence lies.

sometimes stories and books are all that we need to take us away

This dwarf still observes the world from his own self-imposed height.

I tend to describe recurring themes as being part of a writer’s DNA – something so deeply embedded in us that even we don’t notice it until we’ve written three or four books.

I’ll tell you something,” said Francis,urgent with shoe lace, “if we keep on saying things weren’t when we know perfectly well they were, we shall soon dish up any sort of chance of magic we...

I write to find strength.I write to become the person that hides inside me.I write to light the way through the darkness for others.I write to be seen and heard.I write to be near those...