“I had an interesting day's reading yesterday, with the sudden sensation of being in close contact with what I was reading. […] But as for reading how curious it is: all these books, their lore of the ages, waiting to be embraced but usually slipping out of one's nerveless hands on to the floor. When one reads properly it is as if a third person is present.”

“I hadn't originally intended to do any reading, what if I did read one book more or one book less, whether I read or not wouldn't make a difference, I would still be waiting to get cremated.”

“Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.”

“Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.”

“Books everywhere. On the shelves and on the small space above the rows of books and all along the floor and under chairs, books that I have read, books that I have not read.”

“But usually, I watched Linda read. I couldn't believe she'd read so much in summer! Sometimes she laughed, reading her book, and one time she even cried. I didn't know how anyone could make such a big deal about books.”

“Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read-ultimately you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.”

“Reading those books is all he does these days. I think he’s even read some of them. What kind of disturbed individual would read the same book twice, I ask you?”

“Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings.”

“I read my eyes out and can't read half enough. … The more one reads the more one sees we have to read.”