Quotes about read page 15

“Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Books, Hope, Soul, Sense

“Storiesto be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.”

John Connolly The Book of Lost Things

Source: The Book of Lost Things

Life, World, Reading

“I do not feel obliged in my reading. I read to be entertained and to relax, and to go into another world, not because it's good for me.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

World, Feeling, Reading

“He could hardly read or write but his heart spoke the language of the good”

Primo Levi (1918–1987) Italian chemist, memoirist, short story writer, novelist, essayist

Reading, Heart

“Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"
He laughed. "That's against the law!"
"Oh. Of course.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Books, Law, Reading

“Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

Life, Books, Reading

“Reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil.”

Anne Michaels book Fugitive Pieces

Source: Fugitive Pieces

Kiss, Reading

“Boys think girls are like books, If the cover doesn't catch their eye they won't bother to read what's inside.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Variant: Boys think girls are like books, If the cover doesn't catch their eye they won't bother to read what's inside.

Books, Girl, Boy, Thinking

“I'm wondering what to read next." Matilda said. "I've finished all the children's books.”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda

Children, Books, Reading

“It's not the tales of Stephen King that I've read,
I need protection from the things in my head…”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

“That's the magic of books. They're never quite the same for any two people. When you read one, you automatically make it your own.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: My Unfair Godmother

People, Books, Reading

“Did you read the instructions?” He shook his head. “Why, were you afraid they’d take your man card away?” “Are you going to help me or just make fun of me?” “Can’t I do both?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Rises

Reading, Help

“People talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

People, Books, Reading

“I love his dear eyes in which the vulnerability and beauty of his soul can be plainly read.”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

Source: The Color Purple

Love, Beauty, Soul, Reading

“If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Books, Time, Reading

“When I first read the dictionary, I thought it was a long poem about everything.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

I Have A Pony (1985)

“The truth is that I hate to think about other people reading my books," Miranda said. "It's like watching someone go through the box of private stuff that I keep under my bed.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Hate, People, Truth, Books

“You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Life, Reading, Dependency

“I would rather have someone read my diary than look at my iPod playlists.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“My strength returns to me with my cup of coffee and the reading of the psalms.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

Coffee, Reading

“I read that speaking in front of a crowd is the number-one fear in America. I found that amazing. Number two was death. Number two! That means that, if you're ever at a funeral, you'd rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998)

Death, Fear, Reading

“There'll be times when the only refuge is books. Then you'll read as if you meant it, as if your life depended on it.”

Ken Bruen (1951) Irish writer

Source: The Killing Of The Tinkers

Life, Books, Time, Reading

“Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Recalling "what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils" April 30, 1773, p. 217
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 2

“Books--oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the same
feelings."

"I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least be
no want of subject. We may compare our different opinions.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Books, Feeling, Thinking, Reading

“Sometimes he used a spade in his garden, and sometimes he read and wrote. He had but one name for these two kinds of labor; he called them gardening. ‘The Spirit is a garden,’ said he”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“A peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.”

Walter Mosley (1952) American writer

Source: The Long Fall

Waiting, Reading

“I've read a lot of books, so I know bunches of stuff that sounds like it could be true.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

“This nice and subtle happiness of reading, this joy not chilled by age, this polite and unpunished vice, this selfish, serene life-long intoxication.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

Life, Happiness, Age, Reading

“Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.”

Harold Bloom book How to Read and Why

Source: How to Read and Why

Nature, Learning, Reading

“Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“It is not about reading the Word. It is about obeying the Word.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

“Remember, when you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble. It’s like reading the I Ching or tea leaves.”

Kelly Link (1969) American writer

Reading, Tea, Hurt

“If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big colour photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer.”

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

Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.
Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Love, Books, Photo, Thinking

“Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

World, Reading, Past, Future

“Half the American people never read a newspaper. Half never vote for President — the same half?”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Sometimes quoted as: Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for president. One hopes it is the same half.
[Bill, Maxwell, http://www.sptimes.com/2002/07/07/Columns/In_gloomy_times__let_.shtml, In gloomy times, let's try to find a sense of humor, St. Petersberg Times, 2002-07-07, 2008-10-04]
Variant: Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
Source: 1990s, Screening History (1992), Ch. 1: The Prince and the Pauper, p. 5

People, Reading

“Take no heed of her…. She reads a lot of books.”

Jasper Fforde book The Eyre Affair

Source: The Eyre Affair

“Man is what he reads.”

Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) Russian and American poet and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

“Read, learn, work it up, go to the literature.

Information is control.”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

Literature, Learning, Reading

“If I have not read a book before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Reading New Books" (1825)
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)

“It was not uncommon to walk in the door of their home and find my mother sitting on the sofa reading over a manuscript with shampoo horns sculpted into her hair. Anne Sexton's voice would be blasting from the speakers.”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

Home, Reading

“I had never feared insomnia before--like prison, wouldn't it just give you more time to read?”

Lorrie Moore (1957) American writer

Fear, Time, Reading

“Only in today's sick society can a man be persecuted for reading too many books.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

“Reading's my reward at the end of the day”

Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I'll not have my grandson subjected to the humiliation of his reading becoming public. We have to cope with this disgrace discreetly -- Grandma Ruth”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Grip of the Shadow Plague

Reading, Grandma

“Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Coffee, Chance, Reading

“Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage.”

Pat Conroy book The Prince of Tides

Source: The Prince of Tides, character Henry Wingo, chapter 2, page 53 (e-book edition)

“I read once that explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog," Mark said. "You find out how it works, but the frog dies in the process.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“But what happens when her beauty is torn from her like a cover from a book? Will he care to read her then, although her pages speak of nothing but love for him?”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Love, Books, Beauty, Reading

“The women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription.”

Henry James book The Wings of the Dove

Source: The Wings of the Dove

Women, Books, Reading

“He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one I had never read before, one that surprised me with all it had to say.”

Alice Hoffman book Blackbird House

Source: Blackbird House

Books, Way, Reading

“Write in the morning, revise in the afternoon, read at night, and spend the rest of your time exercising your diplomacy, stealth, and charm.”

Roberto Bolaño book The Savage Detectives

Source: The Savage Detectives

Exercises, Time, Reading, Night

“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 9 (Education At Bangalore).

Books, Study, Memory, Reading

“Is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a sufficient deterrent from reading?”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

People, Reading

“In truth, I wanted her to read my mind so I didn't have to stoop to the womanly art of articulation.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Truth, Art, Reading

“Hassan couldn't read a first-grade textbook but he'd read me plenty. That was a little unsettling but also sort of comfortable to have someone who always knew what you needed.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

“Imagine having a mother who worries that you read too much. The question is, what is it that's supposed to happen to people who read too much? How can you tell when someone's crossed the line.”

Helen Oyeyemi book Boy, Snow, Bird

Source: Boy, Snow, Bird

People, Imagination, Question, Reading

“Anyone who thinks one book has all the answers hasn't read enough books.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Variant: ... anyone who thinks one book has all the answers hasn't read enough books.
Source: Saga, Vol. 6

Books, Thinking, Reading

“In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Men, Reading, Victory

“Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.”

Michel Houellebecq (1956) writer

Source: H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life

Love, Life, World, Universe

“No two persons ever read the same book.”

Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) American writer, literary and social critic, and noted man of letters

Books, Reading, Personality

“And I am pretty sure that's the point of reading fiction -- so someone else can say in a way you never would have something you recognize immediately.”

Curtis Sittenfeld (1975) Novelist, short story writer

Way, Reading

“Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

Books, Time, Reading

“Zara: It's just a registry…
Kit: Am I the only one who's read X-Men and realizes why this is a bad idea?”

Cassandra Clare book Lord of Shadows

Source: Lord of Shadows

Men, Idea, Reading

“Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.”

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

“Teenagers read millions of books every year. They read for entertainment and for education. They read because of school assignments and pop culture fads.”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

Books, Education, School, Reading

“I often feel sorry for people who don't read good books; they are missing a chance to lead an extra life.”

Scott Corbett (1913–2006) American children's writer

Life, People, Books, Feeling

“My early and invincible love of reading--I would not exchange for the treasures of India.”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

Love, Reading

“people's emotions are rarely put into words, far more often they are expressed through other cues.
the key to intuiting another's feelings is in the ability to read nonverbal channels, tone of voice, gesture, facial expression and the like”

Daniel Goleman (1946) American psychologist & journalist

Source: Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

People, Feeling, Reading

“A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

Source: Essays of Elia

Books, Dogs, Reading, Tea

“Maybe television causes cancer, Garp thinks; but his real irritation is a writer's irritation: he knows that wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.”

John Irving book The World According to Garp

Source: The World According to Garp

“A fondness for reading, properly directed, must be an education in itself.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park

Education, Reading

“Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Books, Imagination, Reading

“On Friday night, I was reading my new book, but my brain got tired, so I decided to watch some television instead.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Books, Reading, Night

“I read somewhere that 77 percent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 percent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves.”

Jerry Garcia (1942–1995) American musician and member of the Grateful Dead

“This Treasury paper, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

As cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 50, ISBN 1586486389
Post-war years (1945–1955)

“Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wants to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.”

E.M. Forster book Aspects of the Novel

Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 11
Source: Aspects of the Novel

Books, Time, Reading

“It cannot be that the people should grow in grace unless they give themselves to reading. A reading people will always be a knowing people.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

People, Reading

“Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, 'This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!”

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

Source: Adams-Jefferson Letters

World, Religion, Time, Reading

“Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 13: Leiden

History, Idea, Drink, Wine

“When you read, don't just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think”

Tom Schulman (1950) American film director, screenwriter

Source: Dead Poets Society: The Screenplay

“Dismissing fantasy writing because some of it is bad is exactly like saying I'm not reading Jane Eyre because it is a romance and I know romance is crap.”

China Miéville (1972) English writer