“It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you can't do anything else, read all that you can.”

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

“When you can't do anything else to a boy, you can make him wash his face.”

“Read Homer once, and you can read no more;
For all books else appear so mean, so poor,
Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need.”

“Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”

“There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become a part of you, in a way that words in a book you've read only once can't.”

“Everybody can write; writers can't do anything else.”

“But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else.

Wash the car, maybe.”

“You can't just be reading books all the time and leave the writting of them to others.”

“You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.”