A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of read more

Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words appear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why --but the editorialists forget it --terrorists are reduced to bombs and hijacking.

Quotation... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he read more

Quotation... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium.

There's one good kind of writer -- a dead one.

There's one good kind of writer -- a dead one.

The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it.

The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it.

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.

Writers are the main landmarks of the past.

Writers are the main landmarks of the past.

Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes, read more

Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes, and always count their change when it is handed to them.