"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
— Oscar Wilde

"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book."
— Groucho Marx

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."
— Ayn Rand

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
— Ayn Rand

"Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions."
— Ayn Rand (Philosophy: Who Needs It?)

"The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone."
— Ayn Rand (The Virtue of Selfishness)

"I think, therefore I'll think."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."
— Ayn Rand

"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing."
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about."
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)

"I guess there are never enough books."
— John Steinbeck

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."
— Oscar Wilde

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."
— Oscar Wilde

"When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes."
— Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."
— Mark Twain

"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
— Toni Morrison

"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."
— Oscar Wilde

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up."
— Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides)

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive."
— James Baldwin

"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all."
— Abraham Lincoln

"Good books don't give up all their secrets at once."
— Stephen King

"It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between."
— C.S. Lewis

"When the day shall come that we do part," he said softly, and turned to look at me, "if my last words are not 'I love you'-ye'll ken it was because I didna have time."
— Diana Gabaldon (The Fiery Cross)

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."
— Joseph Brodsky

"The world was hers for the reading."
— Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)

"Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else."
— Mark Twain

"A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."
— G.K. Chesterton

"I am simply a "book drunkard." Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them."
— L.M. Montgomery (The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery : Volume I: 1889-1910)

"In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you."
— Mortimer J. Adler

"No furniture is so charming as books."
— Sydney Smith

"If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads."
— François Mauriac

"He that loves reading has everything within his reach."
— William Godwin

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
— Mark Twain

"Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."
— Ray Bradbury

"Wicked people never have time for reading. It's one of the reasons for their wickedness."
— Lemony Snicket

"A good library will never be too neat or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"Well-read people are less likely to be criminals."
— Lemony Snicket

"All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk."
— Lemony Snicket

"Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there."
— Sarah Dessen

"Without music, life would be a mistake."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinking."
— Bob Dylan

"The future for me is already a thing of the past -
You were my first love and you will be my last"
— Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan: Love And Theft)