The real world dissolved and I was free to drift in fantasy, living a thousand lives, each one more powerful, more accessible, and more real than my own

If I knew your thoughts, I would know what you are, for your thoughts make you who you are. By changing our thoughts, we can change our lives.

Books are another kind of magic.

Dr. Manning said he’d thought at first it might be sleeping sickness, or even narcolepsy, whatever that was, but – no, Pete was healthy enough physically. Manoel growled that the boy was bone-lazy, spending his...

Apart from such chaotic classics as these, my own taste in novel reading is one which I am prepared in a rather especial manner, not only to declare, but to defend. My taste is for...

Books inspire me to create a better reality.

I like to write books where I get a question on the radio, and I don’t have an answer for it.

Books allow you to take flight, unlike the chicken wings I stapled to my back before eating them.

Provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all.

You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following...

I feel closer ties and more intimate bonds with certain characters in books, with certain images I’ve seen in engravings, than with many supposedly real people with the metaphysical absurdity known as ‘flesh and blood’....

Knowing that others want to read my writing is the greatest inspiration to write.

I have managed not to finish certain books. With barely a twinge of conscience, I hurl down what bores me or doesn’t give what I crave: ecstasy, transcendence, a thrill of mysterious connection. For, more...

Et voilà, mon passé n’est plus qu’un trou énorme. Mon présent: cette bonne au corsage noir qui rêve près du comptoir, ce petit bonhomme. Tout ce que je sais de ma vie, il me semble...

It’s a symbiotic process, writing. What I am makes the books—not part of me, all of me—and then the books themselves inform the sense of what I am. So the more I can be, the...

So many books, so little time

You can’t just walk away when you see a good book but to buy and own it.

A friend once told me that the real message Bram Stoker sought to convey in ‘Dracula’ is that a human being needs to live hundreds and hundreds of years to get all his reading done;...

All I could determine was that it must have been a nice thing to see if it was a house you were thinking about moving into. But not so nice if it was the house...

One of the most difficult things when you were trying to navigate the world of books was dealing with all the unreliable authors. They were so unbelievably tricky to keep track of. An author might...

Maybe Heaven will be a library. Then I will be able to finish my to-read list.

121.George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces122.Max Planck – Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory; Where Is Science Going?; Scientific Autobiography123.Henri Bergson – Time and Free Will; Matter and Memory; Creative Evolution; The Two...

We don’t want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don’t want to close a book with a...

That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third...

Lies Have expiry dates but the truth never expires

We’ll always need printed books that don’t mutate the way digital books do; we’ll always need places to display books, auditoriums for book talks, circles for story time; we’ll always need brick-and-mortar libraries.

I’ve developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some...

He kissed me for a long moment, holding my shoulders, perhaps to keep me from pressing my whole body against his. Then he tried to lift my bag.”My God,” he said. “What happened?””I found out...

I recall once seeing a commentary advertised as having been written in prison without recourse to other commentaries and by reliance on the Holy Spirit alone. I doubt whether those last two phrases are complementary....

No doubt my books too, like my mortal being, would eventually die, one day. But one has to resign oneself to dying. One accepts the thought that in ten years oneself, in a hundred years...

What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to...

[I]t’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship....

A censor is an expert in cutting remarks. A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.

Yet the experience of reading a novel has certain qualities that remind us of the traditional apprehension of mythology. It can be seen as a form of meditation. Readers have to live with a novel...

The feedback I get is that my books are honest. I don’t sugar-coat anything. Life is really hard.

Many a man lives a burden to the Earth, but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.

More books.” His eyes went wide. “You have, like, then books you just said you haven’t read.””Doesn’t mean I won’t get more books.” I smiled at is incredulous expression. “I haven’t been able to read...

Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say.Of course those who write short books have even less to say.

He’s at the library, I think. Safe and sound in his world of books… Maybe he’ll write one someday.

Perhaps they were looking for passion; perhaps they delved into this book as into a mysterious parcel – a gift box at the bottom of which, hidden in layers of rustling tissue paper, lay something...

Wer niemals ganze Nachmittage lang mit glühenden Ohren und verstrubbeltem Haar über einem Buch saß und las und las und die Welt um sich her vergaß, nicht mehr merkte, daß er hungrig wurde oder fror...

mind-boggling” moments, when I would doubt myself and what I was writing. It has been said that we, ourselves, are our own worst critics.All the hard work had payed off though, and I created a...

I don’t think anybody should read anything except for fun because you won’t learn anything unless you enjoy it.

What sort of a book would you like to read next?” she asked.

I love the smell of a new book, but I prefer inhaling fresh bottles of ink and glue. They get me more lightheaded – unless I read the book.

Everybody comes to the library naked. That’s why they come here – to dress themselves in books.

A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.

I am an Author a person who plays with words so they can dance in the minds of others

And she never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician’s Book.

I get really excited if I think I’m going to introduce somebody to a writer they haven’t found before and I think they’ll love. My favorite books to get as gifts are any that the...