There were the fairy tales my father told to me at bedtime. All the standards. I thought my father invented wolves.

I grew up in a house without many books. The books the nuns made us read in school didn't interest me.

Reading honest literature makes you love the world. Knowledge and understanding are love. Reading educates our feelings and enhances our sympathy. When you read for understanding, you are fundamentally changed. You are a different person at the end of the story or the novel than you were when it began.

The universe may be tenderly indifferent to our fate, but we shouldn’t be. We are our brothers’ keepers. There is right, and there is wrong. There are consequences to our actions or inactions. Disregard can be an act of violence.

I was reading for understanding. I wanted to do to a reader what Salinger did for me.

Reading is also a creative activity if you're doing it right. You can learn more from a story that's left the tracks than from a successful story.

Novels are written, not wished into existence. You have to sit your ass in the chair or nothing gets done.