They lose all interest in the bridge.
"The Art of Reviewing" (1973), p. 10
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)
“[When] he's here, he's always reading. He says books stop time. I myself think he's crazy… Don't tell anyone, but when he reads something that he likes he gets real happy, turns on the music, and dances by himself, or with a broom sometimes.”
Source: Winter's Tale
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Mark Helprin 22
US author, journalist, commentator 1947Related quotes

Source: 1980's, Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the Art world of Our Time, 1980, p. 119

“Why read the crystal when he can read the book?”
Hansard, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 468, col. 319.
Speech in the House of Commons, 29 September 1949.
1940s
Context: It has been suggested, I think by the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire (Mr. Boothby) that the most constructive suggestion he could make was to urge an early General Election and a return of a Tory Government in Britain. Why on earth should he want to prophesy what might result from a Tory Government when history has the record for him? Why read the crystal when he can read the book?

"Tarquin of Cheapside"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

Captain Otto Harkaman in Space Viking (1962-1963)

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

Source: Journey Within (1947), Ch. 2 : The Three Revelations
Context: No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books, either to discover or to control himself. And the most objective books are the most deceptive. The greatest book is not the one whose message engraves itself on the brain, as a telegraphic message engraves itself on the ticker-tape, but the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to reader spreads the fire that is fed by the various essences, until it becomes a vast conflagration leaping from forest to forest.