Quotes about read
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“The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.”

Harper Lee (1926–2016) American author

Books, Thinking, Reading

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood (1987)

Books, Thinking, Reading

“This book is to be read in bed.”

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

Books, Reading

“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.”

Diane Duane book So You Want to Be a Wizard

Source: So You Want to Be a Wizard

Books, Reading

“What sense did the world make? Where was God, the Bloody Fool? Did He have no notion of fair and unfair? Couldn't He read a simple balance sheet? He would have been sacked long ago if He were managing a corporation, the things he allowed to happen…”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Source: A Fine Balance

God, World, Fools, Sense

“It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you can't do anything else, read all that you can.”

Jane Hamilton (1957) American novelist

Books, World, Reading

“I've been going insane reading my students' papers. Apparently several of them think the Hubble Space Telescope is used to search the universe for hubbles."
~ Ithana Aaronson”

Jeanne Birdsall (1951) American children's writer

Source: The Penderwicks on Gardam Street

Search, Thinking, Universe, Reading

“A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

July 14, 1763, p. 121
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson, Vol 2

Reading

“He even listened to more than her sounds, because Tiger Lily was a girl of few words. He listened with his eyes, watched her facial expressions, judged body language, and therefore read Tiger Lily better than anyone else.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Girl, Reading

“I am a recluse at present & do nothing but write & read & read & write”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Source: The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume 1: 1903-1917

Reading

“Well, some men learn by listening, some read, some observe and analyze — and some of us just have to pee on the electric fence.”

Spider Robinson book Variable Star

Source: Variable Star

Men, Learning, Reading

“What is truth? For the multitude, that which it continually reads and hears.”

Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) German historian and philosopher

Source: The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History

Truth, Reading

“Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?”

Cornelia Funke (1958) author

Reading, Personality

“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”

Anne Tyler (1941) American novelist

Life, Reading

“When the Viennese government compiled a Catalogue of Forbidden Books in 1765, so many Austrians used it as a reading guide that the Hapsburg censors were forced to include the Catalogue itself as a forbidden book.”

Craig Nelson (1971) Scottish footballer

Source: Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations

Books, Reading

“Dig deep into its communitarian ethos and it reads more like an America that might have been, an America fervently devoted to the quaint goals of working together and getting along. Of course, this America does exist. It's called Canada.”

Sarah Vowell The Wordy Shipmates

Source: The Wordy Shipmates

Reading

“Nefret had always had an uncanny ability to read his thoughts. 'Did she cry?' she asked sweetly. 'And then you kissed her? You shouldn't have done that. I'm sure you meant well, but kissing someone out of pity is always a mistake.”

Elizabeth Peters The Falcon at the Portal

Source: The Falcon at the Portal

Kiss, Reading, Cry

“When people read his books they have an uncontrollable desire to hang the author in the town square. I can’t think of a higher honor for a writer.”

Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) Chilean author

People, Books, Thinking, Reading

“Pleasing things: finding a large number of tales that one has not read before. Or acquiring the second volume of a tale whose first volume one has enjoyed. But often it is a disappointment.”

Sei Shonagon book The Pillow Book

Source: The Pillow Book

Disappointment, Reading

“We might be on the same page, but I wasn't happy about reading it.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead Reckoning

Source: Dead Reckoning

Happiness, Reading

“… but I preferred reading the American landscape as we went along. Every bump, rise, and stretch in it mystified my longing.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Reading

“Considering Adrian had once gotten bored while reading while reading a particularly long menu, I had a hard time imagining he'd read the Hugo book in any language.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Books, Imagination, Time, Reading

“The student is to read history actively not passively.”

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

Source: Self-Reliance and Other Essays

History, Reading

“But the first lesson reading teaches is how to be alone.”

Jonathan Franzen book How to Be Alone

Source: How to Be Alone

Reading

“Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books forever.”

Ezra Pound book ABC of Reading

Source: ABC of Reading

Books, Understanding, Reading

“She wanted letters. Real letters written in his handwriting on actual paper that she could hold and keep and read whenever the mood struck her. They were proof, solid and tangible, that someone was thinking about her.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Mood, Thinking, Reading

“Might not hurt you to pick up a book, just as an experiment."

Whatever. I looked up the definition for 'nerd' in the dictionary. Know what it said?"

"I bet you'll tell me."

" 'If you're reading this, you are one.' "

You're a riot.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Grip of the Shadow Plague

Books, Reading, Hurt

“I don't remember ever feeling lonely; in fact, on the rare occasions when I met other children I found their games and their talk far less interesting than the adventures and dialogues I read in my books.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: A History of Reading

Children, Books, Feeling, Game

“If you read one book a week, starting at the age of 5, and live to be 80, you will have read a grand total of 3,900 books, a little over one-tenth of 1 percent of the books currently in print.”

Lewis Buzbee (1957) American writer

Source: The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History

Books, Age, Reading

“She wished she had a little yellow house of her own, with a flower box full of real flowers and herbs – pansies and rosemary – and a sweet lover who would swing dance with her in the evenings and cook pasta and read poetry aloud.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Source: Violet & Claire

Flowers, Lovers, Reading, Dance

“He liked to read with the silence and the golden color of the whiskey as his companions. He liked food, people, talk, but reading was an inexhaustible pleasure. What the joys of music were to others, words on a page were to him.”

James Salter (1925–2015) American novelist and short-story writer

Source: All That Is

People, Pleasure, Food, Music

“The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Books, Reading

“An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Source: I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie

Books, History, Literature, Thinking

“Children of the future Age
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

A Little Girl Lost, st. 1
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)

Love, Children, Age, Time

“To my son,

If you are reading this letter, then I am dead.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Reading, Dead

“Read. Forget everything you've been told about books and read.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Books, Reading, Forgetting

“Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking,”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1930s, Wisehart interview (1930)
Context: Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theaters is apt to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.

Age, Thinking, Reading