“I don’t think anyone should be banned. If you don’t like a book, set it aside.”

In life’s brief game to be a winner A man must have; oh yes, above All else, of course, someone to love.

I’m not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.

Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.

I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.

Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river that had come down to earth so that its waters might flow over the ashes of those long dead, and that would continue to flow long after the human race had, through hatred and knowledge, burned itself out.

I think it’s possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.

The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.

Man without life companion is either god or beast.

Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. Just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates him.

I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I’m not. I’m just obsessed with my work.

I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.

Good books get praised, bad books get praised. Good books get ignored, bad books get ignored.

I just love music – by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent.

And an equation is the same whether it’s written in red or green ink.

Of course, the greater one’s need, the greater one’s propensity to be mesmerized.

And the process of reading is such a private one. I once came into a room where a friend of mine was reading one of my books, and he clicked his tongue impatiently and shooed me off.

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

Reading the Martin Luther King story, that little comic book, set me on the path that I’m on today.

If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.

A kid can never have too many books!

The prime function of the children’s book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it.

I tried every diet in the book. I tried some that weren’t in the book. I tried eating the book. It tasted better than most of the diets.

Books are like mirrors: if a fool looks in, you cannot expect a genius to look out.

The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them.