“Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?”

— Cornelia Funke

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Cornelia Funke 83

author 1958

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“Reading activates and exercises the mind.
Reading forces the mind to discriminate. From the beginning, readers have to recognize letters printed on the page, make them into words, the words into sentences, and the sentences into concepts.
Reading pushes us to use our imagination and makes us more creatively inclined.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

“Oh, absolutely, it felt more serious than your typical job. One of the things that got us through how difficult the shooting actually was was that we are telling a real story.”

John C. Reilly (1965) American actor

“Fairly large print is a real antidote to stiff reading.”

Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist

31 May 1929, in a letter to K.Sisam, Oxford University Press. Printed in Natural Selection, Heredity, and Eugenics, p. 20, ed. J.H.Bennett, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.
1910s–1920s

“A person, who reads only to print, to all probability reads amiss”

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic

Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betressend (1780-81), Vierundzwanzigster Brief; cited from Bernhard Suphan (ed.) Herders sämmtliche Werke (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877-1913) vol. 10, p. 260. Translation from Samuel Taylor Coleridge Biographia Literaria (London: Rest Fenner, 1817) vol. 1, ch. 11, pp. 233-34.
Context: With the greatest possible solicitude avoid authorship. Too early or immoderately employed, it makes the head waste and the heart empty; even were there no other worse consequences. A person, who reads only to print, to all probability reads amiss; and he, who sends away through the pen and the press every thought, the moment it occurs to him, will in a short time have sent all away, and will become a mere journeyman of the printing-office, a compositor.

“It is indeed very possible, that the Persons we laugh at may in the main of their Characters be much wiser Men than our selves; but if they would have us laugh at them, they must fall short of us in those Respects which stir up this Passion.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 47 (24 April 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“There are indeed certain names and prefixes to names which suggest serious reading, independently of the words printed on the title-page of the book. If the Archbishop of Canterbury, or General Booth, or the Emperor William published a novel, for instance, the work might reasonably be expected to contain an exposition of personal views on some question of the day. But in ordinary cases the purpose-novel is a simple fraud, besides being a failure in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand.”

Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) Novelist, short story writer, essayist (1854-1909)

The Novel: What It Is (1893)

“A real book reads us.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Reported by Lionel Trilling in "On the Modern Element in Modern Literature", Partisan Review, January-February 1961, p. 15 (reprinted in Trilling's Beyond Culture, 1965): Trilling wrote: "taking the cue of W. H. Auden's remark that a real book reads us, I have been read by Eliot's poems...".
More commonly reported as "a real book is not one that we read but one that reads us". This paraphrase of Trilling's reported quotation first appeared in a review by Robie Macauley of Trilling's Beyond Culture in the New York Times Book Review, 14 November 1965, p. 38: "I must borrow a phrase from Mr. Trilling (who borrows it from W. H. Auden): a real book is not one that we read but one that reads us." The same version, attributed to Auden, appears in Evan Esar, 20,000 Quips & Quotes (1968), p. 87 (with a comma after "we read"). There is no evidence that Auden ever wrote or said this version of the phrase.
Other variations (e.g. "not one that's read" for "not one that we read") seem to be misrecollections of Robie Macaulay's paraphrase.
Reported quotations

“I think that the online world has actually brought books back. People are reading because they're reading the damn screen. That's more reading than people used to do.”

Bill Murray (1950) American actor and comedian

Interview with Jessica Lee Jernigan (May 1999) http://jessicaleejernigan.typepad.com/jessica_lee_jernigan/2004/08/archival_interv.html

“All... good and useful properties of character have a price in exchange for others which have just as much use. Talent has a market price, since the sovereign or estate-owner can use a talented person in all sorts of ways. Temperament has a fancy price,22 since one can converse well with such a person; he is a pleasant companion. But, character has an inner value[,] and it is above all price.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 203
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

“She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page.”

Jane Hamilton (1957) American novelist

“Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?”

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Cornelia Funke 83

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