“I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.”

History is not a procession of illustrious people. It’s about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.

All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.

It is easy to proclaim all souls equal in the sight of God; it is hard to make men equal on earth in the sight of men.

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person.

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.

There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.

The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.

Our crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it.

True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one’s life.

Colour is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.

Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.

A parent knows better than any book or “expert” what their kid really needs.

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.

No one ever writes a book in which he is the bad guy.

The biggest seller is cookbooks and the second is diet books – how not to eat what you’ve just learned how to cook.

Mary is the Mysterious Book of Predestination to glory.

While other kids were out playing and doing healthy things, I read an ancient judo book with a neck hold that was fatal to so many people they finally dropped it from judo.

I would not ever try to be a show intellectual, which I was accused of doing a while on ABC. I thought you were supposed to read the guests’ books.

We do not consider our principles as dogmas contained in books that are said to come from heaven. We derive our inspiration, not from heaven, or from an unseen world, but directly from life.