“Half-way through the labour of an index to this book I recalled the practice of my ten years' study of history; and realized that I had never used the index of a book fit to read.”

“I read a lot of books. Here are the books I'm using for my 9/11 project. [Wright gestures to three six-foot-long shelves of books.] As I read them I highlight certain passages. Then I have an assistant write down each quote on an index card and note where it came from.”

“If I were to hold up a bank with my index finger and my thumb as the “gun,” then I hope I wouldn’t try to use half my weapon to hitchhike my escape from the police.”

“I'm a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, most fiction. I don't read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read”

“Not long after the book came out I found myself being driven to a meetingby a professor of electrical engineering in the graduate school I of MIT. He said that after reading the book he realized that his graduate students were using on him, and had used for the ten years and more he had been teaching there, all the evasive strategies I described in the book — mumble, guess-and-look, take a wild guess and see what happens, get the teacher to answer his own questions, etc.But as I later realized, these are the games that all humans play when othersare sitting in judgment on them.”

“If I had nostrils on my index fingers, I wonder what the inside of my nose would smell like?”