“Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who really care for books read all of them. There is no other course.”

“How does Galdoila know about the reward?" i asked.
"He reads the signs," Grover said. "Duh."
"Of course," I said. "Silly me.”

“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.”

“I took a speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.”

“If many great books seem unreadable and unintelligible … it may be because we have not for a long time learned to read by reading them. Great books teach people not only how to read them, but how to read all other books.”

“Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"
He laughed. "That's against the law!"
"Oh. Of course.”

“Maybe you're one of those people who writes poems, but rarely reads them. Let me put this as delicately as I can: If you don't read, your writing is going to suck.”

“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.”

“Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.”

“I meet people who tell me things like, ‘I read your book in two days’. Please don’t do that. These things take me years to write. Slow down. Everything you read, slow down. Reading is our great act of resistance in this age of speed and carelessness.”