"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
— Albert Einstein

"There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it."
— Bertrand Russell

"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city."
— George Burns

"The covers of this book are too far apart."
— Ambrose Bierce

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

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

"The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones."
— Joseph Joubert

"I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Letter to Joseph Twichell, 9/13/1898"
— Mark Twain

"When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.”"
— Virginia Woolf

"Today a reader, tomorrow a leader."
— Margaret Fuller

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

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

"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."
— Joseph Addison

"In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which are frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you...And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. "
— Italo Calvino (If On a Winter's Night a Traveler)

"If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed."
— Benjamin Franklin

"Allowing yourself to stop reading a book - at page 25, 50, or even, less frequently, a few chapters from the end - is a rite of passage in a reader's life, the literary equivalent of a bar mitzvah or a communion, the moment at which you look at yourself and announce: Today I am an adult. I can make my own decisions."
— Sara Nelson (So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading)

"Did you ever hear anyone say, 'That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me'?"
— Joseph Henry Jackson

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."
— Virginia Woolf

"What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce."
— Mark Twain

"Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves."
— Abraham Lincoln

"There are books by which the backs and covers are by far the best parts."
— Charles Dickens

"Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity."
— G.K. Chesterton

"A literary academic can no more pass a bookstore than an alcoholic can pass a bar."
— Carolyn G. Heilbrun

"A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight."
— Robertson Davies

"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)

"As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot."
— John Lennon

"See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time."
— Robin Williamson

"Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?"
— Virginia Woolf

"In politics, If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman."
— Margaret Thatcher

"A study in the Washington Post says that women have
better verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the
authors of that study: 'Duh.'"
— Conan O'Brien

"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