“Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well.”
As quoted in The New York Times (2 July 1978)
Radio Interview for BBC Radio 3 (17 December 1985) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105934
Second term as Prime Minister
“A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.”
Source: Works of Samuel Johnson
“Be you writer or reader, it is very pleasant to run away in a book.”
Source: My Side of the Mountain
(12 August 2005)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2005
Context: Sometimes, I think that the most alien thing to mankind is mankind itself. The real aliens live next door or across the border or somewhere overseas. Each man and woman defines the world about them, creating a set of those things which they consider "normal" and "good" and "evil" and "sympathetic" and "likable," and these are damned indomitable walls. They are high and thick, and it is the task of the writer to penetrate or scale them. To break in. To shatter preconceptions. To force people to rethink cherished opinions and prejudices.
Source: An Erotic Beyond: Sade
“When a long book succeeds, the writer and reader are not just having an affair; they are married.”
Source: The Bazaar of Bad Dreams
TV Interview for Thames TV TV Eye (24 April 1979) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104040
Leader of the Opposition
