“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”

“You're never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.”

“When you read to a child, when you put a book in a child's hands, you are bringing that child news of the infinitely varied nature of life. You are an awakener.”

“The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children.Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children's books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading…It's tosh. It's snobbery and it's foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn't hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian "improving" literature. You'll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.”

“Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.”

“When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.”

“Books give not wisdom where was none before,
But where some is, there reading makes it more.”

“Bookes give no wisdom where none was before,
But where some is, there reading makes it more.”

“If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you don't already possess”