No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.

Like most lit nerds, I'm a voracious reader. I never got enough poetry under my belt growing up but I do read it - some of my favorites, Gina Franco and Angela Shaw and Cornelius Eady and Kevin Young,...

We read our children stories starring elephants and monkeys and bears to teach them about nobility, curiosity and courage, to warn them against selfishness and stubbornness.

This was a lucky recollection - - it saved her from something like regret.

Above all mediums, through which storytelling is conveyed, none has the potential to draw us in, to hold us spellbound, but the unassuming book.

Jack reads too many books. He thinks we're going to drive all year and have great adventures.

I don't so much hope that any reader "agrees" with me, as I hope to haunt them, to trouble their sense of how things actually are.

A man is known by the books he reads.

The most comfortable place for a tired mind is in the lap of a book.

His high spiced wares were made to sell, and they sold; and his thousands of readers could as rationally charge their delight in filth upon him, as a glutton can shift upon his cook the responsibility...

Every author really wants to have letters printed in the paper. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.

Books; I repeat, for they've not only been a solace during the long years but also provided the keys to understanding other people's ideas and achievements, their hopes and fears, quirks and foibles,...

I wouldn't go back to ashes or dust Words gave me life and in them I will surrender From words to words..

How astonishingly intimate the business of fiction is, more intimate than anything that issues from the psychiatrist's couch or even the lovers' bed. You see the soul, pinned and wriggling on the...

I just prefer my fiction with more teeth.

Reading a great work of literature can truly be likened to having a conversation with a great mind.

How I should despise such a thing if I were a man. What a nose she has! what a chin! what a neck! Then her eyes - - and the worst kissing lips in the universe.

Books have given me a magic portal to connect with people of the past and the present. I know I shall never feel lonely or powerless again.

"What's so great about writing?" "You can make anything true."

You should spend more time reading the Good Book and less reading all those novels. What are you going to tell the Lord on Judgement Day when He asks you why you didn't read your bible? Hmm? I said....

You can't blame a writer for what the characters say.

There was a star danced, and under that was I born.

The Tanzanian told her that all fiction was therapy, some sort of therapy, no matter what anybody said.

You can truly miss characters. Not like you miss people, but you can still miss them.

There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind…

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.

You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad.

"I shall write an ode!" threatened Philip direfully. "Ah no, that is too much!" cried De Vangrisse with feeling.

Blessed are the meek, for to them we shall say "Beautiful boys."