READING QUOTES II
quotations about reading
Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.
DIANE DUANE
So You Want to Be a Wizard
The foolish read to escape reality; the wise surrender to it.
TOM HEEHLER
The Well-Spoken Thesaurus
We never reflect whether the story we read be truth or fiction. If the painting be lively, and a tolerable picture of nature, we are thrown into a reverie, from which if we awaken it is the fault of the writer. I appeal to every reader of feeling and sentiment whether the fictitious murder of Duncan by Macbeth in Shakespeare does not excite in him as great a horror of villainy as the real one of Henry IV by Ravaillac as related by Davila? And whether the fidelity of Nelson and generosity of Blandford in Marmontel do not dilate his breast and elevate his sentiments as much as any similar incident which real history can furnish? Does he not, in fact, feel himself a better man while reading them, and privately covenant to copy the fair example?
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Robert Skipwith, August 3, 1771
That was the problem with reading: you always had to pick up again at the very thing that had made you stop reading the day before.
NICHOLSON BAKER
Mezzanine
Whenever I read a poem that moves me, I know I'm not alone in the world. I feel a connection to the person who wrote it, knowing that he or she has gone through something similar to what I've experienced, or felt something like what I have felt. And their poem gives me hope and courage, because I know that they survived, that their life force was strong enough to turn experience into words and shape it into meaning and then bring it toward me to share.
GREGORY ORR
All Things Considered, February 20, 2006
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
J. D. SALINGER
The Catcher in the Rye
It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
JAMES BALDWIN
Life Magazine, May 24, 1963
Who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings what need he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep versed in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge,
As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Regained
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
Books are faithful repositories, which may be a while neglected or forgotten; but when they are opened again, will again impart their instruction.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
"Ostig in Sky", A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.
THOMAS CARLYLE
On Heroes, Hero-worship, & the Heroic in History: Six Lectures
Reading ... is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Universal History of Infamy
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
GARRISON KEILLOR
attributed, The Miracle of Language
I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.
NICHOLSON BAKER
The Anthologist
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Essays
The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children.
NEIL GAIMAN
"Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming", The Guardian, October 15, 2013
Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.
SIR ARTHUR HELPS
Friends in Council
The more imagination the reader has ... the more he will do for himself. He will, at a mere hint from the author, flood wretched material with suggestion and never guess that he is himself chiefly making what he enjoys.
C. S. LEWIS
"On Stories", Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories