“Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; —& they are the life, the soul of reading; — take them out of this book for instance, — you might as well take the book along with them.”

“Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.”

“Thoughts that cannot survive the open air and that evaporate as soon as we take them out of the room. To put them to the test of isolation. Take them out of the book where you found them, they do not endure.”

“Pray thee, take care, that tak'st my book in hand,
To read it well: that is, to understand.”

“My behavior is nonetheless, deplorable. Unfortunately, I'm quite prone to such bouts of deplorability--take for instance, my fondness for reading books at the dinner table.”

“Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. […] If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.”

“Take some books and read; that’s an immense help; and books are always good company if you have the right sort.”

“You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.”

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.”

“This book will take you two days to read. Did you even see the cover? It’s mostly pink. If you’re reading this book every night for months, something is not right.”