Quotes about read
page 13

“We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

Dentist
Source: Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

Death, Books, Reading

“Nathan Sutter," the teacher read.
Here. My mother never calls me Nathan."
Is it Nate?"
She calls me Honeylips.”

Brandon Mull The Candy Shop War

Source: The Candy Shop War

Teachers, Reading

“Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.”

Alan Bennett (1934) English actor, author

Books, Thinking, Reading

“You're always in the kitchen," Alianora said when she poked her head through the door a moment later. "Or the library. Don't you ever do anything but cook and read?”

Patricia C. Wrede Dealing with Dragons

Source: Dealing with Dragons

Reading, Cooking

“People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don't know anything. So write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

People, Reading

“How does the ordinary person come to the transcendent? For a start, I would say, study poetry. Learn how to read a poem. You need not have the experience to get the message, or at least some indication of the message. It may come gradually. (92)”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

Study, Learning, Reading, Personality

“I want to urge you very strongly to travel as much as you can, and to evolve yourself as an internationalist. It's as important a part of your education as a radical as the reading of any book.”

Christopher Hitchens Letters to a Young Contrarian

Source: Letters to a Young Contrarian

Books, Education, Travel, Reading

“My greatest wish -- other than salvation -- was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Books, Understanding, Time, Reading

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Books, Reading

“It seems to me that if you wish to apply laws to us, it were only reasonable to consult us on them, and from what you have read to me about Parliament, I do not think any dragons are invited to go there”

Naomi Novik book His Majesty's Dragon

Source: His Majesty's Dragon

Law, Thinking, Reading

“Lists of books we re-read and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves”

Russell Banks (1940) American author

Books, Reading

“Go to hell, I'm reading!”

Archie Goodwin (1937–1998) writer

Hell, Reading

“That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Reading

“I went to college, but I learned to write by reading and writing.”

Daniel Pinkwater (1941) writer

Learning, Reading

“I am not unique in my elegiac sadness at watching reading die, in the era that celebrates Stephen King and J. K. Rowling rather than Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll.”

Harold Bloom (1930–2019) American literary critic and scholar

Sadness, Reading

“You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. We're just so damn good at reading them wrong.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Reading

“Take some books and read; that’s an immense help; and books are always good company if you have the right sort.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Books, Reading, Help

“All you have to do to educate a child is leave him alone and teach him to read. The rest is brainwashing.”

Ellen Gilchrist (1935) Fiction writer, poet

Education, Reading

“I want you to take a red-hot bath as hot as you can bear it, and just relax your nerves. You can read in the tub if you wish.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

Reading

“We are the Bibles the world is reading; We are the creeds the world is needing; We are the sermons the world is heeding.”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

World, Reading

“Ballycumber (ba-li-KUM-ber) n.
One of the six half-read books lying somewhere in your bed.”

Douglas Adams book The Meaning of Liff

Source: The Deeper Meaning of Liff

Books, Lying, Reading

“People who don't read are brutes.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

People, Reading

“The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

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

Books, Soul, Reading

“May I propose a Herzog dictum? those who read own the world, and those who watch television lose it.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

World, Reading

“Like O'Rielly, we'll grab the most important word of each sentence… 'The' for example. Also, I'll say, 'I'm angry,' and the graphic will read, 'Colbert angry.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Reading

“As I walk back to the school on my own, I realise I'm crying. So I go back to the stories I've read about the five and I try to make sense of their lives because in making sense of theirs, I may understand mine.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

School, Understanding, Sense, Reading

“Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth

People, Books, Time, Reading

“What would a racist call werewolves? Wargs? She kind of liked that one, but suspected that racist bastards didn't read Tolkien.”

Patricia Briggs book Fair Game

Source: Fair Game

Reading

“[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.”

Mark Helprin book Winter's Tale

Source: Winter's Tale

Happiness, Books, Music, Thinking

“Surprising what you can dig out of books if you read long enough, isn't it?”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Rand al'Thor
(15 September 1992)

Books, Reading

“What's your favorite book?
"The last one I read.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Books, Reading

“Too many adults wish to 'protect' teenagers when they should be stimulating them to read of life as it is lived.”

Margaret A. Edwards (1902–1988) American librarian

Life, Reading

“Read – and be curious. And if somebody says to you: 'Things are this way. You can't change it' - don't believe a word.”

Cornelia Funke (1958) author

Way, Change, Reading

“You could put your confusion and upset and worries into whatever book you were reading. You could sort of set them down in there, and you could come out with your head on a little straighter. I don't why stories worked that way, but they did.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Story of Us

Books, Way, Reading

“If anyone reads this when I have passed to the big bad beyond I shall be posthumorously embarrassed. I shall spend my entire afterlife blushing.”

Carrie Fisher book The Princess Diarist

Source: The Princess Diarist

Reading

“My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

Books, Reading

“And when I was young, did I ever tell you, I always wanted to get inside
a book and never come out again? I loved reading so much I wanted
to be a part of it, and there were some books I could have stayed in
for ever.”

Peter Ackroyd (1949) English author

Source: First Light

Love, Books, Reading, Parting

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.”

Anaïs Nin book The Diary of Anaïs Nin

The Diary of Anaïs Nin , Volume One 1931-1934
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Death, Children, Pleasure, Books

“Have read little and understood less.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Reading

“No one on earth is so boring and insignificant that he or she is not worth writing or reading about… One thing's for sure—no one but you can be the hero of your story.”

Jerry Spinelli (1941) American children's writer

Source: Today I Will: A Year of Quotes, Notes, and Promises to Myself

Reading

“When I read a book, I want you to be reading it at the same time. I want to know what would Amelia think of it. I want you to be mine. I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart, Amy.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Books, Thinking, Time, Reading

“Read, read, read. That's all I can say.”

Carolyn Keene book The Secret of the Old Clock

Source: The Secret of the Old Clock

Reading

“I do not read a book; I hold a conversation with the author.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Books, Reading

“You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free.”

Paul Rand (1914–1996) American graphic designer

Understanding, Learning, Reading

“Logos and branding are so important. In a big part of the world, people cannot read French or English--but are great in remembering signs”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

People, World, Reading, Parting

“He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, for that is what he will know.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: The Writing Life

Learning, Reading

“A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Books, Reading

“Books are like truth serum-- if you don't read, you can't figure out what's real.”

Rodman Philbrick book Freak the Mighty

Source: Freak the Mighty

Truth, Books, Reading

“You don't read it in the sense of reading a message; it doesn't work like that. What's happening is that the Shadows are responding to the attention you pay them.”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Source: The Golden Compass

Sense, Reading

“[Education] has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.”

George Macaulay Trevelyan (1876–1962) Historian

English Social History (1942), ch. 18.

Education, Reading

“I like to read things I've read before. It's like listening over and over to your favorite song.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Reading

“I've read your summary."
"And?"
"It's not incompetent."
Be still, my heart, so I don't faint from such faint phrase. "Did you expect it to be written in crayon?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

Reading, Heart

“Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.”

Gary Shteyngart (1972) american journalist and writer

Reading

“A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Reading

“One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

As quoted in The Making of Kubrick's 2001 (1970) by Jerome Agel, p. 300
1970s
Context: One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. Two-thirds of 2001 is realistic — hardware and technology — to establish background for the metaphysical, philosophical, and religious meanings later.

Pain, People, Science, Reading

“The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

As quoted in Forbes (April 1948), p. 42
Variant: The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. . . . It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.

Pleasure, Support, Reading

“There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

Hunger, Books, Reading

“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Studies
Essays (1625)

Reading

“I don't browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it.”

Helene Hanff book 84, Charing Cross Road

Source: 84, Charing Cross Road

Books, Home, Reading

“In general, librarians enjoyed special requests. A reference librarian is someone who likes the chase. When librarians read for pleasure, they often pick a good mystery.”

Karen Joy Fowler (1950) American novelist, short story writer, editor

Pleasure, Reading

“He lies like a book. And he reads a lot of books.”

Elfriede Jelinek book Wonderful, Wonderful Times

Source: Wonderful, Wonderful Times

Books, Reading

“She snatched at the dream that had comforted her for so long. It was faded and thin, like a letter too often read.”

Elizabeth George Speare book The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Source: The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Dreams, Reading

“I could read the great books but the great books don't interest me.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems

Books, Reading

“Beware
Those Who
Are ALWAYS
READING
BOOKS”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

Books, Reading

“A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is a love story like any other.”

Siri Hustvedt book The Summer Without Men

Source: The Summer Without Men

Love, Books, Reading

“Close, close all night
the lovers keep.
They turn together
in their sleep,

Close as two pages
in a book
that read each other
in the dark.

Each knows all
the other knows,
learned by heart
from head to toes.”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

Source: Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments

Books, Lovers, Sleep, Learning

“I just thought you'd like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin' I can do it.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Reading

“The greatest gift is a passion for reading.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Passion, Reading

“The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book over I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Source: The Citizen of the World, Or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friends in the Country, by Dr. Goldsmith

Books, Time, Reading

“Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Reading

“Dad said I would always be "high minded and low waged" from reading too much Ralph Waldo Emerson. Maybe he was right.”

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist

Source: The English Major

Reading

“I don’t believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced.”

Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer

Reality, Reading, Personality

“A book that one has not read yet is always more exciting than a book one has memorized.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Books, Reading

“Yes, I read. I have that absurd habit. I like beautiful poems, moving poetry, and all theof that poetry. I am extraordinarily sensitive to those poor, marvelous words left in our dark night by a few men I never knew.”

Louis Aragon (1897–1982) French poet, novelist and editor

Source: Treatise on Style

Men, Beauty, Reading, Night

“I read in the newspapers they are going to have 30 minutes of intellectual stuff on television every Monday from 7:30 to 8. to educate America. They couldn't educate America if they started at 6:30.”

Groucho Marx book The Groucho Letters

Source: The Groucho Letters

Education, Reading

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Books, Reading, Help

“Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and there discovered was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Books, Age, World, Freedom

“If you start the day reading the obituaries, you live your day a little differently.”

David Levithan book Love Is the Higher Law

Source: Love Is the Higher Law

Reading

“I picture heaven as a vast library, with unlimited volumes to read. And paintings and statues to examine galore. I picture it as a great doorway to learning… rather than one great dull answer to all our questions”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Source: The Mummy

Question, Learning, Reading, Painting

“What is reading but silent conversation.”

Walter Savage Landor Imaginary Conversations

Source: Imaginary Conversations

Reading

“The ability to read becomes devalued when what one has learned to read adds nothing of importance to one's life.”

Bruno Bettelheim (1903–1990) child psychologist and writer

Life, Learning, Reading

“If privacy had a gravestone it might read: “Don't Worry. This Was for Your Own Good.””

John Twelve Hawks book The Dark River

Source: Fourth Realm Trilogy (2005-2009), The Dark River (2007)

Reading

“I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to.”

Helene Hanff book 84, Charing Cross Road

Source: 84, Charing Cross Road

Love, Sense, Reading

“A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Source: Metaphysical Horror (1988)

Reading

“That's why we read fiction, isn't it? To remind us that whatever we suffer, we're not the only ones?”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Suffering, Reading

“Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Variant: You can't consume much if you sit still and read books.
Source: Brave New World (1932), Ch. 3

Books, Reading

“Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

Bee, Reading

“Reading was not a fallback position for her but an ideal state of being.”

Laura Lippman book What the Dead Know

Source: What the Dead Know

Reading

“What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.”

Alan Bennett book The Uncommon Reader

Source: The Uncommon Reader

Books, Reading

“Imagination can take you Places…. READ”

Brandon Mull Fablehaven

Source: Fablehaven

Imagination, Reading

“Reading is not simply an intellectual pursuit but an emotional and spiritual one. It lights the candle in the hurricane lamp of self; that's why it survives."

[, Newsweek Magazine, March 25, 2010]”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Light, Reading

“When you read to a child, when you put a book in a child's hands, you are bringing that child news of the infinitely varied nature of life. You are an awakener.”

Paula Fox (1923–2017) Amercian book author

Life, Books, Nature, Reading

“I read my eyes out and can't read half enough. … The more one reads the more one sees we have to read.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Abigail Adams (28 December 1794), Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society
1790s
Source: Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife

Reading

“Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously…. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.”

Edwidge Danticat (1969) Novelist, short story writer, memoirist

Life, People, Reading, Parting

“I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Quoted in the "Apophthegms, Sentiments, Opinions and Occasional Reflections" of Sir John Hawkins (1787-1789) in Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897), vol. II, p. 6, edited by George Birkbeck Hill
Source: Johnsonian Miscellanies - Vol II

Reading