Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book I have ever written.
I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.
The only words that ever satisfied me as describing nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment; they express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.
You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.
The most valuable book we can read, about countries we have visited, is that which recalls to us something that we did notice, but did not notice that we noticed.
I am a bad reporter because everything seems to me worth reporting; and a bad reviewer because every sentence in every book suggests a separate essay.
But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.
The books that influence the world are those that it has not read.
People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.
The Iliad is only great because all life is a battle, The Odyssey because all life is a journey, The Book of Job because all life is a riddle.
Most books are bought by women.
For the reader who has put away comic books, but isn’t yet ready for editorials in the Daily News.
When I was little, I knew that I was not adopted, but I actually imagined and hoped that I was, and that my real parents were going to come get me. I was just too different from the rest of the family, so I lived in books and in my imagination.
Good books are as friends, willing to give to us if we are willing to make a little effort.
Well, we have nothing to hide. Our history is an open book. They may find what they are looking for, but the fact is the history of the church is clear and open and leads to faith and strength and virtues.