If you want the law to leave you alone, keep your hair trimmed and your boots shined.

Education is everywhere, prompting one to think, to consider, to remember.

For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.

If you write a book set in the past about something that happened east of the Mississippi, it's a 'historical novel.' If you write about something that took place west of the Mississippi, it's a 'Western'- and somehow regarded as a lesser work. I write historical novels about the frontier.

My lady had the body of a siren, the face of a goddess, and the mind of an Armenian camel dealer.

I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse hunger: the need to know and to learn.

The only power source a book needs is you. If you have to leave for a few minutes you have not lost the story. It is waiting for you when you return. You can pick up a book and resume reading at any time, after a few minutes, a few days, even a few years. A television picture or a movie might be lost forever, but your book is waiting.