“Amy Kofman: Have you read all the books in here?
Derrida: No, only four of them. But I read those very, very carefully.”

“Reading those books is all he does these days. I think he’s even read some of them. What kind of disturbed individual would read the same book twice, I ask you?”

“Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.”

“If many great books seem unreadable and unintelligible … it may be because we have not for a long time learned to read by reading them. Great books teach people not only how to read them, but how to read all other books.”

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”

“It is a general observation that people write as they read. As a rule, careful writers are careful readers and vice versa. A careful writer wants to be read carefully. He cannot know what it means to be read carefully but by having done careful reading himself. Reading precedes writing. We read before we write. We learn to write by reading. A man learns to write well by reading well good books, by reading most carefully books which are most carefully written.”

“The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.”

“I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful; but I never read in either of them, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden."”

“books—there is a good kind of a book and a bad kind of a book. I am not to assume that you are all ill acquainted with this; but I may remind you that it is a very important consideration at present. It casts aside altogether the idea that people have that if they are reading any book—that if an ignorant man is reading any book, he is doing rather better than nothing at all.”

“Here's another piece of advice, only date people who have read a different set of books than you have read, it will save you lots of time in the library.”