“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”

“If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it.”

“Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. […] If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.”

“Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read-ultimately you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.”

“I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.”

“Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.”

“It is a general observation that people write as they read. As a rule, careful writers are careful readers and vice versa. A careful writer wants to be read carefully. He cannot know what it means to be read carefully but by having done careful reading himself. Reading precedes writing. We read before we write. We learn to write by reading. A man learns to write well by reading well good books, by reading most carefully books which are most carefully written.”

“You want to know about anybody? See what books they read, and how they've been read…”

“In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.”

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”