To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking -- and since it cannot, in order read more

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking -- and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence.

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.

Stronger than an army is a quotation whose time has come.

Stronger than an army is a quotation whose time has come.

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

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

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the read more

A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the intrusion.

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.

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.

In America only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, read more

In America only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, and in Australia you have to explain what a writer is.