every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones

reading is the creative center of a writer's life

I read where I can, but I have a favorite place and probably you do, too—a place where the light is good and the vibe is usually strong. For me it’s the blue chair in my study. For you it might be the couch on the sun porch, the rocker in the kitchen, or maybe it’s propped up in your bed—reading in bed can be heaven, assuming you can get just the right amount of light on the page and aren’t prone to spilling your coffee or cognac on your sheets.

If you drop your Kindle in the toilet, you're done.

He sat there studiously bent over his work (Bill saw him), which lay in a slant of crisp white winterlight, his face sober and absorbed, knowing that to be a librarian was to come as close as any human being can to sitting in the peak-seat of eternity’s engine.

Only through fiction can we think about the unthinkable...

You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.

The sort of strenuous reading and writing program I advocate - four to six hours a day, every day - will not seem strenuous if you really enjoy doing these things and have an aptitude for them.

Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair