“No one wants to read poetry. You have to make it impossible for them to put the poem down--impossible for them to stop reading it, word after word. You have to keep them from closing the book.”
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Muriel Rukeyser42
poet and political activist 1913–1980Related quotes
“You have to remember that it is impossible to commit a crime while reading a book.”
John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer
“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
Ray Bradbury book Ray Bradbury
As quoted in "Bradbury Still Believes in Heat of ‘Fahrenheit 451’" http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19930312&slug=1689996, interview by Misha Berson, in ', credited to "Ray Bradbury, quoted by Misha Berson in Seattle Times", in "Quotable Quotes", The Reader's Digest, Vol. 144, No. 861, January 1994, p. 25 http://books.google.com/books?output=html&id=ZqqUAAAAIAAJ&q=%22people+to+stop+reading%22#search_anchor), or an indirect reference to the re-quoting in Reader's Digest (such as: The Times Book of Quotations (Philip Howard, ed.), 2000, Times Books and HarperCollins, p. 93<br>Variant: We're not teaching kids to read and write and think. … There's no reason to burn books if you don't read them.<br>As quoted in "At 80, Ray Bradbury Still Fighting the Future He Foresaw" http://www.raybradbury.com/articles_peoria.html, interview by Roger Moore, in The Peoria Journal Star (August 2000) <br class="br">Context: The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. Look at the magazines, the newspapers around us – it's all junk, all trash, tidbits of news. The average TV ad has 120 images a minute. Everything just falls off your mind. … You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
Henry David Thoreau A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Source: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
David Sedaris book Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
Variant: Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.
Source: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer
Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)
Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon
Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence
Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer
Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)