Wikipedia flourished partly because it was a shrine to altruism.

I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.

Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.

For me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo.

Printed books usually outlive bookstores and the publishers who brought them out. They sit around, demanding nothing, for decades. That's one of their nicest qualities - their brute persistence.

I've never been a fast reader. I'm fickle; I don't finish books I start; I put a book aside for five, ten years and then take it up again.

Haven't you felt a peculiar sort of worry about the chair in your living room that no one sits in?

Poetry is prose in slow motion.

Spoon the sauce over the ice cream. It will harden. This is what you have been working for.

But spending your life concentrating on death is like watching a whole movie and thinking only about the credits that are going to roll at the end. It’s a mistake of emphasis.

Shoes are the first adult machines we are given to master.

Disappointment is a blessing. If you were never disappointed, you'd never know what was important to you.

The Right's view of government and the Left's view of big business are both correct.

To promote knowledge is thus an inescapable duty imposed on every one of the friends of God.

Deep in my heart subsides the infrequent word, And there dies slowly throbbing like a wounded bird.

Not everyone understands how you can spin two lassos at the same time, one of hope and one of grief.

I will be brave, thought Despereaux. I will try to be brave like a knight in shining armour. I will be brave for the Princess Pea.

I think my mother's and Granny's storytelling had had the same effect upon me when a child, as the reading of books: my mind was stimulated, my creativity encouraged.

Business exists to supply goods and services to customers and economic surplus to society, rather than to supply jobs to workers and managers or even dividends to shareholders.

Inside each of you is a rich person, a poor person & a middle class person. It is up to you to decide which person you become.

The worst thing you can do is end up with a network show on cable or end up with a cable show on network.