Quotes about reading
page 2

“There are essentially two things that will make you wise -- the books you read and the people you meet.”

Jack Canfield (1944) American writer

“Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers — such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Open letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers’ Congress (16 May 1967) “The Struggle Intensifies,” Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record, ed. Leopold Labedz (1970).

Pain, People, Fear, Confidence

“David Eddings:‏ I'm afraid that ignorance, hate, racism, and violence will be exacerbated by silence. If speaking out is not an answer then what is?
Markus Persson:‏ Reading up on history, thinking for yourself, and not being an idiot.”

Markus Persson (1979) Swedish video game programmer

In Twitter (14 August 2017) https://twitter.com/notch/status/897158641962319878

Hate, History, Thinking, Silence

“Hermione always yawned at the mention of Socialism, and refused even to read Antichrist. 'Don't talk to me about the lower classes,' she used to say. 'I hate them. They smell.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

And Ravelston adored her.
Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 5

Hate

“I was just reading some poetry, and it talked about how things start as one thing and change into another, and I just thought, what a great concept for a song.”

Tommy Lee (1962) American drummer

http://www.drdrew.com/article.asp?id=393.

Change

“Learning is to a man as the leaves and branches are to a tree, and it can be said that he should not be without it. Learning is not only reading books, however, but is rather something that we study to integrate with our own way of life.
One who is born into the house of a warrior, regardless of his rank or class, first acquaints himself with a man of military feats and achievements in loyalty, and, listening to just one of his dictums each day, will in a month know 30 precepts. Needless to say, if in a year he learns 300 precepts, at the end of that time he will be much the better.
Thus, a man can divide his mind into three parts: he should throw out those thoughts that are evil, take up those ideas that are good, and become intimate with his own wisdom… I would honor and call wise the man who penetrates this principle, though he lacks the knowledge of a single Chinese character. As for those who are learned in other matters, I would avoid them regardless of how deep their knowledge might be. That is how shallow and untalented this monk is.”

Takeda Shingen (1521–1573) Japanese daimyo of the Sengoku period

William Scott Wilson, ‎Gregory Lee. Ideals of the Samurai: Writings of Japanese Warriors, 1982. p 95

Life, Wisdom, Books, Way

“But what first motivated me wasn’t anything I read. I just got mad seeing the machines ripping up the woods.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

Interview with Earth First! in Administrative Maximum Facility Prison, Florence, Colorado, USA, (June 1999)
Interviews

Motivation, Madness

“A theologian is born by living, nay dying and being damned, not by thinking, reading, or speculating.”

Martin Luther book Table Talk

352
Table Talk (1569)

Thinking

“The whole idea of what happens when you read a book, I find absolutely stunning. Here's some product of a tree, little black squiggles on it, you open it up, an inside your head is the voice of someone speaking, who may have been dead 3000 years, and there he is talking directly to you, what a magical thing that is.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Carl Sagan on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (full interview, May 20th, 1977)
Others

Books, Idea, Tree, Dead

“I am thankful that the President of the United States has given me permission to tell my story. I hope that he and those in authority under him will read my story and judge whether my people have been rightly treated.”

Geronimo (1829–1909) leader of the Bedonkohe Apache

Geronimo's Story of His Life (1907)

People, Hope

“All innovators, logically speaking, have been Futurists in relation to their time. Palestrina would have thought that Bach was crazy, and Bach would have thought Beethoven the same, and Beethoven would have thought Wagner equally so.
Rossini liked to boast that he had finally understood the music of Wagner—by reading it backward; Verdi, after listening to the overture to Tannhäuser, wrote to a friend that Wagner was mad.
So we stand at the window of a glorious mental hospital, even while we unhesitatingly declare that counterpoint and the fugue, which even today are still considered the most important branches of musical instruction…”

Francesco Balilla Pratella (1880–1955) Italian composer

Original text:
Tutti gli innovatori sono stati logicamente futuristi, in relazione ai loro tempi. Palestrina avrebbe giudicato pazzo Bach, e così Bach avrebbe giudicato Beethoven, e così Beethoven avrebbe giudicato Wagner.
Rossini si vantava di aver finalmente capito la musica di Wagner leggendola a rovescio! Verdi, dopo un’audizione dell’ouverture del Tannhäuser, in una lettera a un suo amico chiamava Wagner matto.
Siamo dunque alla finestra di un manicomio glorioso, mentre dichiariamo, senza esitare, che il contrappunto e la fuga, ancor oggi considerati come il ramo più importante dell’insegnamento musicale...
Source: Technical Manifesto of Futurist Music (1911), p. 80

Music, Time, Madness

“The seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency.”

Alhazen (965–1038) Arab physicist, mathematician and astronomer

Alhazen, quoted in “Muslim Journeys.” Bridging Cultures Bookshelf: Muslim Journeys. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013. Also in Ibn al-Haytham Brief life of an Arab mathematician: died circa 1040 (September-October 2003) http://harvardmagazine.com/2003/09/ibn-al-haytham-html

Truth, Faith, Question, Nature

“The first statement of the two principles reads as follows. First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both(a)reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter II, Section 11, pg. 60

Personality

“They learn to speak, write, and do arithmetic. They have a phenomenal memory. If one read them the Encyclopedia Britannica they could repeat everything back in order, but they never think up anything original. They'd make fine university professors.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

Thinking, Learning, Universe, Memory

“If you desire to discover peace and consolation for your soul and to serve God truly, do not find your satisfaction in what you have left behind, because in that which now concerns you you may be as impeded as you were before, or even more. But leave as well all these other things and attend to one thing alone that brings all these with it (namely, holy solitude, together with prayer and spiritual and divine reading), and persevere there in forgetfulness of all things.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

The Sayings of Light and Love

God, Peace, Soul, Solitude

“The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, "Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem." If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Testimony before Congress (21 March 2007), as quoted in "Gore Implores Congress To Save The Planet" at CBS Evening News (21 March 2007) http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/21/politics/main2591104.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_2591104

Problem, Science, Baby

“Whatever it says in the bible the truth remains. You can read the bible and dismiss it as nonsense if you like; you can dismiss it as nonsense without reading it to save time if you prefer.”

Simon Munnery (1967) British comedian

Attention Scum! (2001), How To Live (2005)

Truth, Time

“Ivanov came to quite the same conclusion, though life supplied him with quite different material to think about. He puts it like this: many lives have a mystical sense, but not everyone reads it right; more often than not it is given to us in cryptic form, and when we fail to decipher it we despair because our lives seem meaningless… the secret of a great life is often a man’s success in deciphering the mysterious symbols vouchsafed to him, understanding them, and so learning to walk in the true path.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book The Oak and the Calf

The Oak and the Calf (1975)

Life, Secret, Understanding, Thinking

“At about the time when the autobiography first appeared I remember reading its opening chapters in the ill-printed pages of some Indian newspaper. They made a good impression on me, which Gandhi himself at that time did not.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Reflections on Gandhi (1949)

Appearance, Time

“Since the decay of the belief in personal immortality, death has never seemed funny, and it will be a long time before it does so again. Hence the disappearance of the facetious epitaph, once a common feature of country churchyards. I should be astonished to see a comic epitaph dated later than 1850. There is one in Kew, if I remember rightly, which might be about that date. About half the tombstone is covered with a long panegyric on his dead wife by a bereaved husband: at the bottom of the stone is a later inscription which reads, ‘Now he’s gone, too’.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

As I Please (17 February 1947) http://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/tribune/AsIPlease19470214.html <br class="br">"As I Please" (1943–1947)

Death, Time, Personality, Dead

“Michael Moorcock: Several reviewers accused you of saying that all intercourse was rape. I haven't found a hint of that anywhere in the book. Is that what you are saying?
Dworkin: No, I wasn't saying that and I didn't say that, then or ever.… My point was that as long as the law allows statutory exemption for a husband from rape charges, no married woman has legal protection from rape. I also argued, based on a reading of our laws, that marriage mandated intercourse — it was compulsory, part of the marriage contract. Under the circumstances, I said, it was impossible to view sexual intercourse in marriage as the free act of a free woman.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Interview in New Statesman & Society (21 April 1995), discussing her books Intercourse and Right Wing Women.

Marriage, Books, Law, Parting

“It's a game. What you read is not what's happening. The whole planet is in trouble for the same reason”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

2012
Context: On world economy: "I see the crisis like a theatrical play that concerns the world – not just Greece... But, I am afraid that it is not easy for any country today to decide their own future... Corruption is another way for just a few to benefit... It's a game. What you read is not what's happening. The whole planet is in trouble for the same reason... Generally speaking, yes, greed and capital. In other words, banking".

Game

“There were only two things that you were allowed to say, and both of them were palpable lies: as a result, the war produced acres of print but almost nothing worth reading.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"The Prevention of Literature" (1946)
Context: Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops. This was well illustrated by the Spanish civil war. To many English intellectuals the war was a deeply moving experience, but not an experience about which they could write sincerely. There were only two things that you were allowed to say, and both of them were palpable lies: as a result, the war produced acres of print but almost nothing worth reading.

War

“When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Charles Dickens" (1939)
Context: When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer. I feel this very strongly with Swift, with Defoe, with Fielding, Stendhal, Thackeray, Flaubert, though in several cases I do not know what these people looked like and do not want to know. What one sees is the face that the writer ought to have. Well, in the case of Dickens I see a face that is not quite the face of Dickens's photographs, though it resembles it. It is the face of a man of about forty, with a small beard and a high colour. He is laughing, with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity. It is the face of a man who is always fighting against something, but who fights in the open and is not frightened, the face of a man who is generously angry — in other words, of a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.

George Müller (1805–1898) German-English clergyman

A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller Written by Himself, First Part.
First Part of Narrative

God, Truth, Way

“When I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out”

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

Thoughts in Westminster Abbey (1711).
Context: When I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind.

Beauty

“God only knows what she thought. My environment contained nothing more alien than writing or the desire to express one’s self in writing. But I never forgot the look of astonishment and bewilderment on the young woman’s face when I had finished reading and glanced at her. Her inability to grasp what I had done or was trying to do somehow gratified me. Afterwards whenever I thought of her reaction I smiled happily for some unaccountable reason.”

Richard Wright book Black Boy

Black Boy (1945)

Self-confidence, God, Smile

“I don't expect it to be easy, but I'm certain it will be fruitful. My mission is to take a different approach: Instead of explicitly encouraging young people to read, my goal is to get them to see the value in their own narratives — that they, too, have a story, and that there's power not just in telling it, but in the opportunity to do so.”

Jason Reynolds (1983) author of young adult novels

As quoted in [Jason Reynolds Named New National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-20-002/jason-reynolds-named-new-national-ambassador-for-young-peoples-literature/2020-01-13/, Library of Congress, 10 March 2020, January 13, 2020]

People

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy. We cannot expect those living in poverty and ignorance to worry about saving the world. For those of us able to read this magazine, it is different. We can do something to preserve our planet.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

"The Power of One", TIME Magazine (26 August 2002) http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1003125,00.html

World, Future

“Reading more books will only confuse you more and you will be dreaming about success instead of becoming successful yourself.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Success, Dreams, Books

“At school, you have geniuses who can only memorise the facts. Reading and memorising books from cover to cover, without any promise of creativity or of proposing your new idea to the world.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Books, World, Idea, School

“Practice is necessary. You can't learn to swim just by reading a book about swimming. Otherwise, you will continue to look for teachers at each stop.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Learning, Teachers, Books

“The more that you read,
The more things you will know.
The more that you learn,
The more places you'll go.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

I Can Read With My Eyes Shut! (1978)

Learning

“Reading ideas improves,
reading stories entertains,
reading the news informs,
reading books teaches,
reading the song rhymes”

Josephs Quartzy (1999) Tanzanian actor

Source: Sweetest song I know

Books, Idea

“A fool may buy all the books in the world, and they will be in his library; but he will be able to read only those that he deserves to.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Source: Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9 Vols.

Books, World, Fools

“His ignorance seemed to widen with everything he read.”

V.S. Naipaul book Half a Life

Source: Half a Life

“Ordinary people simply don't know what books mean to us, shut up here. Reading, learning, and the radio are our amusements.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

People, Books, Learning

“She read everything.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote, and brings to birth in us also the creative impulse.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

"Anonymity: An Enquiry"
Source: Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

Literature, Birth

“Carpe Jugulum," read Agnes aloud. "That's… well, Carpe Diem is 'Sieze the Day,' so this means-"
"Go for the throat”

Terry Pratchett book Carpe Jugulum

Source: Carpe Jugulum

“We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and it's efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Men, World

“It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country," he read. "This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.”

Terry Pratchett book Jingo

Source: Jingo

Country

“People were people, even if they had four legs and had called themselves names like Dangerous Beans, which is the kind of name you gave yourself if you learned to read before you understood what all the words actually meant.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

People, Learning

“Beppu (n.)

The triumphant slamming shut of a book after reading the final page.”

Douglas Adams book The Meaning of Liff

Source: The Deeper Meaning of Liff

Books

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Gwendolen, Act II
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Travel, Training, Funny

“If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1870), letter #342a of The Letters of Emily Dickinson (1958), edited by Thomas H. Johnson, associate editor Theodora Ward, page 474
Source: Selected Letters

Books, Way, Feeling

“Life is a book and there are a thousand pages I have not yet read.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Life, Books

“I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Thinking

“That book taught me that by reading, I could live more intensely. It could give me back the sight I had lost. For that reason alone, a book that didn't matter to anyone changed my life.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Life, Books, Change

“It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Algernon, Act I
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Dependency

“We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Age, Beauty, Thinking

“I would so hate to be a first-person character! Always on your guard, always having people read your thoughts!”

Jasper Fforde book Lost in a Good Book

Source: Lost in a Good Book

Hate, People, Personality

“Before they read words, children are reading pictures.”

David Wiesner (1956) American children's illustrator and writer

Source: Free Fall

Children

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Way

“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.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Books

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.”

Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Thinking, Parting

“I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Pleasure, Learning

“Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew about the world and about themselves.”

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Source: Time Cat

Books, World, Change

“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Death, Heart

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Variant: Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Time

“If you read, you'll judge.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

“Believe everything you read”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

“Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

“Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading--I like reading books in the bulk.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Books

“Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whilst, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own read.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

Way

“I love to read, and I don't believe that you have to finish one book before you start another.
--Mallory Pike”

Ann M. Martin (1955) American writer of children's literature

Source: Hello, Mallory

Love, Books

“I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Pleasure, Dead

“Besides, rereading, not reading, is what counts.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

“I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Wild Geese

Life, Way, Personality

“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.

People, Books

“She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell and she had felt that was true of life — one scratched on the wall.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Life

“Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Books, Past, Heart

“To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.”

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French writer and philosopher

A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire (1988)

Beauty, Feeling

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“You can be too rich and too thin, but you can never be too well read or too curious about the world.”

Tim Gunn (1953) American actor and fashion consultant

Source: Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons for Making It Work

World

“If you have not done things worthy of being written about, at least write things worthy of being read.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

“She had her addictions and one of them was reading.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

“You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.”

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) Italian author and poet

Way, Perseverance, Night

“At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Feeling, Loss

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Pain, World, History, Thinking

“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

Books, Chance

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Books, Dreams, Sleep

“Reading can be a road to freedom or a key to a secret garden, which, if tended, will transform all of life.”

Katherine Paterson (1932) American children's writer born and mainly raised in China

Life, Secret, Freedom

“From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

To S J Perelman about his book Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge (1929), as quoted in LIFE (9 February 1962)

Books, Laughter

“Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later--no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover or how much we learn or forget--we will return.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

Books, World, Way, Thinking

“For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Disease

“POLONIUS: What do you read, my lord?
HAMLET: Words, words, words.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

“I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Books

“We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.”

B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) American behaviorist

As quoted in B. F. Skinner : The Man and His Ideas (1968) by Richard Isadore Evans, p. 73.
Context: We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.

Love, Books

“When I want to read a novel, I write one.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

“Have you killed anyone?” she asked quickly.
“What? Did you miss what I said, about turning murder into
an art form?”
“But you haven’t actually killed anyone yet, have you? I read
your file.”
He glowered. “Technically, yeah, all right, maybe I haven’t”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Playing with Fire

Art

“Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

Deep, For Men, Education

“I read like a wolf eats.
I read myself to sleep every night.”

Gary Paulsen (1939) American writer and musher

Sleep, Wolf, Night

“You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Books

“I read like the flame reads the wood.”

Alfred Döblin (1878–1957) German expressionist novelist

“In theory it was, around now, Literature. Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.”

Terry Pratchett book Soul Music

Source: Soul Music

Hate, Books, Literature

“Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Pleasure

“… don't read anything except what destroys the insulation between yourself and your experience…”

Louise Erdrich (1954) writer from the United States

“We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

1945 Source: [Kaufman, Charlie, Inspirational Writing Advice From Charlie Kaufman - On Writing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRfXcWT_oFs, YouTube, BAFTA Guru, 2017-01-06, 2020-03-09] (at 7:08 of 41:08)

“It's up to you how you waste your time and money. I'm staying here to read: life's too short.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Life, Money, Time

Quotes about reading page 2

Quotes about reading
page 2