Jhumpa Lahiri, on fiction:

Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.

- Jhumpa Lahiri.

William E. Gladstone, on books:

Books are delightful society.

If you go into a room and find it full of books - 

even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you,

to bid you welcome.

- William E. Gladstone.

Marita Golden, on reading and writing:

The symbiotic relationship between reading and writing is a cornerstone of our individual intellectual journey,

and our educational system.

We write as an act of self-expression.

We read because language renders unto us the vitality of real and imagined experience.

- Marita Golden.

Happy Thanksgiving :)

If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.

- Meister Eckhart.

H. P. Lovecraft, on writing:

At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour.

No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.

- H. P. Lovecraft.

Margaret Atwood, on writing:

A word after a word after a word is power.

- Margaret Atwood.

Barack Obama, on writing:

Writing has been an important exercise to clarify what I believe, what I see, what I care about, what my deepest values are.

The process of converting a jumble of thoughts into coherent sentences makes you ask tougher questions.

- Barack Obama.

Maya Angelou, on writing:

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

- Maya Angelou.

Albert Einstein, on imagination:

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

- Albert Einstein.

Tatiana de Rosnay, on stories:

When a story is told, it is not forgotten.

It becomes something else, a memory of who we were; the hope of what we can become.

– Sarah’s Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay.

Ernest Hemingway, on writing:

I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

- Ernest Hemingway.

Isabel Allende, on writing:

Write what should not be forgotten.

- Isabel Allende.

Lloyd Alexander, on reading:

Keep reading.

It's one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.

- Lloyd Alexander.

Caroline Gordon, on books and reading:

A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.

– Caroline Gordon.

Dr. Seuss, on books:

Fill your house with stacks of books,

in all the crannies and all the nooks.

- Dr. Seuss.

Sylvia Plath, on being a writer and an introvert:

We stayed at home to write,

to consolidate our outstretched selves.

- Sylvia Plath.

Kurt Vonnegut, on reading and writing:

I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found.

By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history,

we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well.

This to me is a miracle.

– Kurt Vonnegut.

Anne Fadiman, on literature:

For me, literature is a way of enlarging myself by learning about people who are not like me.

- Anne Fadiman.

Edgar Allan Poe, on inspiration and writing:

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

- Edgar Allan Poe.

Laini Taylor, on writing and reading:

I write because, as wonderful as life is - and it is truly wonderful - it isn't enough.

It does not, for example, contain dragons.

I find this unsatisfactory.

So I read.

And I write.

- Laini Taylor.