“I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.”

It occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility.

It is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck.

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.

Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.

Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don’t be afraid to follow it.

Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.

The mind of man is capable of anything.

It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

To be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection, fears, doubts, all these things which stand in the way of achievement. I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.

Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.

To be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian.

I don’t like work but I like what is in work – the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – for yourself, not for others – which no other man can ever know.

I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.

The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.

Who knows what true loneliness is – not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.

Just because you’re from a city ten miles outside of St. Paul. It doesn’t mean you don’t read magazines, or the incredible Internet, and what’s going on in the world. I never, ever take a client, or women, for granted.

Just because you’re from a city ten miles outside of St. Paul. It doesn’t mean you don’t read magazines, or the incredible Internet, and what’s going on in the world. I never, ever take a client, or women, for granted.

I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours.

If I could read a book, I’d definitely read one of yours.

To hone my voice, I read everything, from books to cereal boxes, three times: once for fun, the second time to learn something new about the writing craft, and the third time was to improve that piece.

For the first time i began to think, consciously and deliberately of religion and other worlds. The Hindu religion especially went up in my estimation; not the ritual or ceremonial part, but it’s great books, the “Upnishads,” and the “Bhagavad Gita.”

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good from The Savior of the world is communicated to us through this Book.