Books inspire a man to embrace the world or flee it. They start wars and end them. They make the men and women who write and publish them vast fortunes, and nearly as quickly can drive them into...

Teacher, tender comrade, wife,A fellow farer true through life,Heart whole and soul free,The August father gave to me.

Stevenson threw back his head and made a slow murmuring sound, If only I could secure a violent death.Pardon?What a fine success! Stevenson continued, spurring Jack into a canter as he lost himself in...

When I ply the cutlass and make the equivalent of sixpence, idiot conscience applauds me. But if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds by writing, idiot conscience wails over my neglect and the...

These writers take the essence of every person around them, turn them into books and stories without permission or even a simple thank-you, and want all the credit and glory for themselves.

that bookshops will one day disappear altogether and be replaced by mail order, that eventually books themselves would be finally and fully buried by that awful foe, so much cheaper and easier to...

He worshipped at the temple of her intellect and I believe it was a comfort to him to know that she left our world with it still shining.

Beware the camel's nose-for its whole body will soon follow.

People hate the idea of politicians, you see, but love the idea of authors, at least until they meet one.

It is not when a man is at the end of his life, but when a man is at the end of his profession, that his soul shows itself.

What's the use of having eyes if we can't see the world we pass through?

Though an angel should write, still 'tis devils must print

The same thing as you, the same as she. The same as anyone who has ever been doubted or told to go away. To prove myself better.

You are always better off to read a book, anyway, than to meet the person behind it.

How odd it must be to go through life believing that a book is a book.

I do not seek the mantle of genius. I am an appreciator, an observer, a preposition, and content in that, and that's me in a nutshell.

I was looking for something else in books. I could not really say what, but I think I can say why: a notion started in my own brain was probably wrong, but an answer read in a work of literature would...

exaggeration is the octopus of the English language

An obscure character by the name of Belial. He is interpreted as a minion of the devil by some scholars, but that is wrong. It is ignorance. The name means, literally speaking, 'one who cannot be...

They always blamed my reading, you know, for my having fewer friends than my brother and for my weak eyes, never thinking that because I had weak eyes and because I was shy, having a book at the ready...

Before long, I had lost my youth and my patience for indulging others. Books were everything in life; books were better than wine.

When they dreamed of turning iron and metal into gold, they called it alchemy. The much more far-fetched dream of turning bound sheafs of plain paper into fortunes, they call publishing.

A man's library opens up his character to the world.

Imagine! It is the real power of a book--not what is on the page, but what happens when a reader takes the pages in, makes it part of himself. That is the definition of literature.

Strangers talking over piles of books do not remain strangers for long.