“Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books - but it is terrible when one has to live it”

“Reading is one of life's great pleasures; talking about books keeps their worlds alive for longer.”

“I'm talking about those novels where the characters aren't really interesting and you don't care about them or anything they care about. It's those books I won't read anymore. There's too much else to read--books about people and things that matter, books about life and death.”

“The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.”

“You have made some notes, read some writing books, and done some research. Mostly what you've done is talk about writing a book. An idea for a book is not a book; it is a waste of time. There is no singular thing that makes someone a writer, but there is one thing that makes someone a joke--talking about writing a book without doing any work.”

“That's one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we can all talk about when we don't want to talk about ourselves.”