“I just got out of the hospital. I was in a speed reading accident. I hit a book mark and flew across the room.”

“I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”

“The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.”

“I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.”

“When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.”

“I set a course just east of Lyra
And northwest of Pegasus
Flew into the light of Deneb
Sailed across the Milky Way
On my ship, the 'Rocinante'
Wheeling through the galaxies
Headed for the heart of Cygnus
Headlong into mystery
-- Cygnus X-1, Book One; The Voyage (1977)”

“I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.”

“The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book over I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.”

“Britain thought he could now go back to being just some English bloke and eating chips. It turns out this notion is utterly wrong, because when Martin walks into a room, I am rather startled to find that a stellar quality enters with him. His energy hits you from across the room: the intense stare, the piercing blue eyes, the feet that are usually barefoot nowadays.”

“I want to be your stranger across a crowded room.”