“People shock me when they say they never read. When I was young, if people didn't read they would never admit it. Now, its quite acceptable to be anti-intellectual.”

“I never need to find time to read. When people say to me, ‘Oh, yeah, I love reading. I would love to read, but I just don’t have time,’ I’m thinking, ‘How can you not have time?’ I read when I’m drying my hair. I read in the bath. I read when I’m sitting in the bathroom. Pretty much anywhere I can do the job one-handed, I read.”

“There is a great superficiality in today's evangelical world. Many Bible-believing Christians share the contemporary case for self-gratification, emotionalism, and anti-intellectualism. Many people who believe in the Bible have never read it.”

“In the days when I didn't know people were reading and judging me, I wrote serenely, as if eating bliny; now I am afraid when I write.”

“Everybody should read fiction… I don’t think serious fiction is written for a few people. I think we live in a stupid culture that won’t educate its people to read these things. It would be a much more interesting place if it would. And it’s not just that mechanics and plumbers don’t read literary fiction, it’s that doctors and lawyers don’t read literary fiction. It has nothing to do with class, it has to do with an anti-intellectual culture that doesn’t trust art.”

“That's the magic of books. They're never quite the same for any two people. When you read one, you automatically make it your own.”