Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.

Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.

but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.

Many books are longer than they seem. They have indeed no end. The boredom that they cause is truly absolute and infinite.

Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair

Scholars have an inordinate respect for long books, and have a terrible rancune against those that attempt to cheat on them. They cannot bear to imagine that short-cuts are possible, that specialism is not an inevitability, that learning need not be stoically endured. They cannot bear writers allegro, and when they read such texts—and even pretend to revere them—the result is (this is not a description without generosity) 'unappetizing'.

The sentences in the book of providence are sometimes long, and you must read a great way before you understand their meaning.

It's kind of an old-fashioned book…It's long; it has a lot of characters; it takes a big theme. It isn't a navel-staring, dysfunctional-family thing that's so beloved of most American writers. It's different, but I think people probably miss those books that were written some time ago – the big book that was written with care.

If a book is well written, I always find it too short.

You devour a book meant to be read, not because you would fill yourself or have an anxious care to be nourished, but because it contains such stuff as it makes the mind hungry to look upon. Neither do you read it to kill time, but to lengthen time, rather, adding to its natural usury by living the more abundantly while it lasts, joining another’s life and thought to your own.

Books destined to form future thinkers take too much time to write, and when written come, in general, too slowly into notice and repute, to be relied on for subsistence.

There is a sense in which every great book is always over the head of the reader: he can never fully comprehend it. That is why these books are great teachers; they demand the attention of the reader and keep his intelligence on the stretch.

Reading consumes time. And if we equate time with money, it should not be wasted on bad books.

Books have to be read (worse luck, for it takes a long time); it is the only way of discovering what they contain.