James Patterson, on reading and writing:

I learnt to love reading.
And then I started scribbling stories, and I liked that even more.

- James Patterson.

Carl Sagan, on books and writing:

What an astonishing thing a book is.

It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles.

But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.

Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you.

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions,

binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs.

Books break the shackles of time.

A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

- Carl Sagan.

Roberto Bolano, on reading:

Reading is like thinking,

like praying,

like talking to a friend,

like expressing your ideas,

like listening to other people's ideas,

like listening to music,

like looking at the view,

like taking a walk on the beach.

- Roberto Bolano.

Plato, on books:

A house that has a library in it has a soul.

- Plato.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, on reading:

Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life.

Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ray Bradbury, on writing:

Love.

Fall in love and stay in love.

Write only what you love, and love what you write.

The key word is love.

You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

- Ray Bradbury.

Gloria Steinem, on writing:

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

- Gloria Steinem.

Eugène Ionesco, on writers and writing:

A writer never has a vacation.

For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.

- Eugène Ionesco.

Anna Quindlen, on reading:

We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming,

our own consciousness in someone else's mind.

- Anna Quindlen.

Henry Ward Beecher, on books:

It's a man's duty to have books.

A library is not a luxury,

but one of the necessities of life.

- Henry Ward Beecher.

James Patterson, on reading:

Reading is not work, not a chore, not a drudgery;
reading is the most joyful thing, yet, in the world.

- James Patterson.

Annie Proulx, on reading and writing:

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page.

Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

- Annie Proulx.

Lawrence Clark Powell, on books:

Books are islands in the ocean of time.

They are also oases in the deserts of time.

- Lawrence Clark Powell.

Lena Dunham, on reading:

Let's be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading.

- Lena Dunham.

Elbert Hubbard, on being a writer and an introvert:

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

- Elbert Hubbard.

Kate Atkinson, on words:

In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.

- Kate Atkinson.

Richard Francis Burton, on books:

Home is where the books are.

- Richard Francis Burton.

Ursula K. Le Guin, on being an introvert and a writer:

Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts.

Extroverts rule.

This is rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts.

We are being taught to be ashamed of not being 'outgoing'.

But a writer's job is ingoing.

- Ursula K. Le Guin.

James Patterson, on reading:

Better readers are better thinkers.

- James Patterson.

Holbrook Jackson, on reading:

Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.

- Holbrook Jackson.