Literature is the extant body of written art. All novels belong to it.The value judgement concealed in distinguishing one novel as literature and another as genre vanishes with the distinction.Every readable novel can give true...

I believe it’s fine to give up books even after a page; there’s so much to read in the world that will delight you, so why should you work against the grain?

Literary detection and firearms don’t really go hand in hand; pen mighter than the sword and so forth.

Perspective was my secret weapon, and books gave me plenty of ammunition.

Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled “This could change your life.

I guess a bit part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves.

I think Chris Brown gets kind of dismissed as a gay writer, and I think Chris’s books are really, really smart. I wish his books sold a little more widely.

Standing there, staring at the long shelves crammed with books, I felt myself relax and was suddenly at peace.

But the act of rereading contains profundities, and challenges, all its own. Going back to a book — sometimes the same physical copy of it — that you fell in love with years ago is...

A blanket would be a great surface to print my new book on, so you could read it in bed while you’re having boring, obligatory sex with your spouse, who’s as dry and exciting as...

Authors of books are not given very much control over the films that are made from their books.

I wrote half this book (the left half) while I was asleep, and I wrote the other half (the top half) while daydreaming. So here we have a case where two halves equal one quarter,...

All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness....

For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that...

It’s a reflex. Hear a bell, get food. See an undead, throw a knife. Same thing, really.

This book is impossible to put down!” Well, apparently it’s also impossible to pick up.

The comic book is not the book. the graphic novel is not the novel. The same, of course, is true of films and television. When we move a story from one medium to another, no...

She quickly realized she had an affinity for the older books and their muted scents of past dinners and foreign countries, the tea and chocolate stains coloring the phrases. You could never be certain what...

The habit of upgrading your mind with self-development messages is highly important, if you desire to reach the pinnacle of your true destiny in life.

The night I sat down to read Dostoievski for the first time was a most important event in my life, even more important than my first love. It was the first deliberate, conscious act which...

When both you and your spouse actively focus on developing godly character qualities, the foundation of your marriage will be twice as strong.

I am no novel-reader — I seldom look into novels — Do not imagine that I often read novels — It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what...

Then it is not uncommon for a man to become lost in a single letter, or hear a voice rise up from the silent page.

I love vast libraries; yet there is a doubt,If one be better with them or without,Unless he use them wisely, and, indeed,Knows the high art of what and how to read.

I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they’d once belonged to the sea.

He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.

Lord, deliver us from what we already knew we wanted. Give us some new desires, the weirder the better.

I’ve only wanted paper and beautiful colors. It was my dream, and it still is my dream. And books. They’re all I need, and the rest I can do without.

People don’t realize how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.

I was sixteen and my mother was about to throw me out of the house forever, for breaking a very big rule, even bigger than the forbidden books. The rule was not just No Sex,...

Responding to a moderator at the Sydney Writers Festival in 2008 (video), about the Spanish words in his book:When all of us are communicating and talking when we’re out in the world, we’ll be lucky...

Every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, “The world is quiet here,” as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.

I might love my e-reader, but I’d never pass up the chance to browse real books.

Learning and reading will enrich your life with wisdom for living.

It’s been said that the men in my books have been absent, or weak, or creepy.

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.

Life is too short to read books that I’m not enjoying.

Writing fiction is one of the greatest forms of empathy. It’s not enough to simply write from the perspective of your characters…you have to feel what they feel.

Het was een vergissing vanwege de juf, te denken dat alleen de dingen die in de boeken staan interessant zijn. Ook deze, die er nog niet in staan, zijn merkwaardig.

Poor Christopher-John had fallen into the hands of Miss. Daisy Crocker. I greatly sympathized him, but as in everything else, Christopher John tried to see the bright side in having to face such a shrew...

This book is a treasure; I did not suspect it would be so good when I picked it up, but now I can feel the printed words seeping through my skin and into my veins,...

You could say we run a dating service. If you make a request, we can hook you up with some books that will take you on a date you will never forget.

I love everything that is old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.

In all memory there is a degree of fallenness; we are all exiles from our own pasts, just as, on looking up from a book, we discover anew our banishment from the bright worlds of...

If you sell, say, two thousand copies, it is the same thing as if you had sold nothing at all because two thousand is too vast—I mean, for the imagination to grasp. While thirty-seven people—perhaps...

My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.

People who don’t normally read make an exception for my books, possibly because they’re short.

When at last I came upon the right book, the feeling was violent: it blew open a hole in me that made life more dangerous because I couldn’t control what came through it.

READ, READ, KEEP READING. UNTIL YOU KICK THE BUCKET.

Almost every time I speak to teenagers, particularly young female students who want to talk to me about feminism, I find myself staggered by how much they have read, how creatively they think and how...