“To be the best, you have to be willing to do what nobody does. And today, if nobody reads and nobody works hard, then you also have to give up reading and become lethargic to be successful.”

“that if you don't read nobody does”

“Keys," she repeated, and slowly stepped back. "What do you mean, keys?""Car keys. As in, give them up. Now." Shane had that look -- hard, and no bullshit. "We don't have time for your drama, Monica. Nobody does.”

“Nobody knows that in reading we are re-living our temptations to be a poet. All readers who have a certain passion for reading, nurture and repress, through reading, the desire to become a writer.”

“Chomsky's writings are "classics" in Mark Twain's sense: something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”

“Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read. If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it. To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended.”