
“Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of ones own.”
Source: The Art of Literature
Source: How Reading Changed My Life
“Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of ones own.”
Source: The Art of Literature
"The Noodle Factory", speech given at the dedication of the Shain Library at Connecticut College, New London
Palm Sunday (1981)
Context: And I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.
“We read frequently if unknowingly, in quest of a mind more original than our own.”
“Reading changed dreams into life and life into dreams.”
Nobel Lecture (2010)
As quoted in "Hand Book : Caution and Counsels" in The Common School Journal Vol. 5, No. 24 (15 December 1843) by Horace Mann, p. 371
Context: This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in; those who have read of everything, are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.
“To read is to let someone else work for you — the most delicate form of exploitation.”
Anathemas and Admirations (1987)
Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)
“This book is to be read in bed.”