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I feel like I'm too busy writing history to read it.
The last thing I saw Gabrielle Giffords do on the floor of the House of Representatives was to line up like the rest of us and read a part of the Constitution. And unbeknownst to her, when she got to the well, her part was the First Amendment.
A lot of people are crazy, cruel and negative. They got a little too much time on their hands to discuss everybody else. I have a limited amount of energy to blow in a day. I'd rather read something that I like or watch a program I enjoy or ride my damn motorcycle or throw back a couple of shots of tequila with my friends.
I've heard 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' read, and I tell you Mrs. Stowe's pen hasn't begun to paint what slavery is as I have seen it at the far South. I've seen de real thing, and I don't want to see it on no stage or in no theater.
The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it's a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.
Read something of interest every day — something of interest to you, not to your teacher or your best friend or your minister/rabbi/priest. Comics count. So does poetry. So do editorials in your school newspaper. Or a biography of a rock star. Or an instructional manual. Or the Bible.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
Not to sound corny, but intelligence is big. Everything fades, and everything can be modified. But intelligence is something you can't fake. I'm not even talking about whether you can read a thesaurus backwards. But there is a beauty in common sense.
It is important to be well read, at least a little bit.
There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.
A real thank you does not come by e-mail. They come in the mail in an envelope. And what comes out of an envelope is a beautiful thing to touch and to handle and to pass around for everyone to read.
Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.
When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read.
We must show there is good in society. If you read the newspapers, you think there are only crooks in this world, but that's not true.
Walking is magic. Can't recommend it highly enough. I read that Plato and Aristotle did much of their brilliant thinking together while ambulating. The movement, the meditation, the health of the blood pumping, and the rhythm of footsteps... this is a primal way to connect with one's deeper self.
I'd always vaguely expected to outgrow my limitations. One day, I'd stop twisting my hair, and wearing running shoes all the time, and eating exactly the same food every day. I'd remember my friends' birthdays, I'd learn Photoshop, I wouldn't let my daughter watch TV during breakfast. I'd read Shakespeare.
When I was in college, I really liked poetry. I don't read much anymore.
At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.
While we read history we make history.
Read enough about the dung beetle, and a picture of its character emerges: patient, optimistic, uncomplaining.
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