books

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."

"The world belongs to those who read."

"It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language"

"Bloodthirsty little beasts. Never trust a duck."

"Yes, when I get big and have my own home, no plush chairs and lace curtains for me. And no rubber plants. I'll have a desk like this in my parlor and white walls and a clean green blotter every Saturday night and a row of shining yellow pencils always sharpened for writing and a golden-brown bowl with a flower or some leaves or berries always in it and books . . . books . . . books. . . ."

"At the end of the day your ability to connect with your readers comes down to how you make them feel."

"I hate to lend a book I love…it never seems quite the same when it comes back to me…"

"A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns."

"The ultimate luxury is to reread: to revisit a book to see how time has treated it, how memory has distorted it, or how my own passing years have cast a new light on it."

"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."

"Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity."

"What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books. Any single thing I have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by something someone else has done. However, my total corpus for quantity, quality and variety can be duplicated by no one else. That is what I want to be remembered for."

"A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way."

"A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."

"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."

"Only bad books have good endings.If a book is any good, it's ending is always bad - because you don't want the book to end."

"Some like to believe it's the book that chooses the person."

"War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend."

"Certain bookworms eat books. Eat them, swear in them, spill things on them."

"With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands."