“I read for growth, firmly believing that what you are today and what you will be in five years depends on two things: the people you meet and the books you read.”

“I meet people who tell me things like, ‘I read your book in two days’. Please don’t do that. These things take me years to write. Slow down. Everything you read, slow down. Reading is our great act of resistance in this age of speed and carelessness.”

“A thirteen-year-old is a kaleidoscope of different personalities, if not in most ways a mere figment of her own imagination. At that age, what and who you are depends largely on what book you happen to be reading at the moment.”

“When you read the sacred Scriptures, or any other book, never think how you read, but what you read.”

“There are two ways you can read the Bible. One is with the light off. By that I mean that you can read it with a proud heart, looking for mistakes, marking seeming contradictions, believing you are intellectually superior to what you are reading. The second way is with the light on. By that I mean with a humble heart, believing that you don't know everything, and that you could gain knowledge by studying the world's greatest-selling book of all time.”

“Goddamn it, do it yourself. You’re five hundred years old and you can’t use a telephone? Read the directions. What are you, an immortal idiot?”

“Learning is not by going to school, books is not by reading; but knowing what you went their for and understanding what you've read in those books.”

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

“… the second time I ever saw you I learned what I had read in books but I had never actually believed: that love and suffering are the same thing and that the sum of love is what you have to pay for it and any time you get it cheap you have cheated yourself.”

“What is this obsession people have with books? They put them in their houses like they're trophies. What do you need it for after you read it?”