Reading Quotes

For me, reading books and writing them are tied together. The words of other writers teach me and refresh me and inspire me.

Building a habit of reading leads to all sorts of reading.

As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.

I like to think about the bestseller list as, "This is the medicine cabinet of a very sick country." Let me look and see what they're reading that isn't nourishing them.

Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together-just the two of you.

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

I was born in Japan and raised in Japan, but those are the only things that make me Japanese, I've grown up reading books from all over.

When I was 9 or 10 years old it wasn't the thing to be seen doing - reading a book in your spare time.

I'm not a speed reader. I'm a speed understander.

Language is the soul of intellect, and reading is the essential process by which that intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life.

Books were my pass to personal freedom.

I like when a poem ends on its "receipts," meaning it gives me something tactile or tangible to dwell on as I exit the reading experience. So I strive to end my own poems that way as well.

I do enjoy reading some science fiction.

You didn't hear the angels singing. It was brought down to Mother Earth, which is where it should be. And that led me to a lot of other reading.

I was in three of the Harry Potter films without reading one of those book, quite thankfully.

W. C. Fields, a lifetime agnostic, was discovered reading a Bible on his deathbed. ''I'm looking for a loop-hole,'' he explained.

Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book -I call that vicious!

Extrinsic reading rewards may not be necessary and may backfire.

He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.

I have been reading the Old Testament, a most bloodthirsty and perilous book for the young. Jehovah is beyond doubt the worst character in fiction.

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.

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

You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here.

Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.

I get weary of reading about rebirths because we're all growing all the time and it diminishes the life you've lived if you say 'I'm a new person.

People ask how I think up my thoughts. Mostly I think them up while reading Paul Simon's lyrics.

In some areas I am more noted for reading then I am for cookies!

In our fathers' time nothing was read but books of feigned chivalry, wherein a man by reading should be led to none other end, but only to manslaughter and bawdry.

I pluck up the good lissome herbs of sentences by pruning, eat them by reading, digest them by musing, and lay them up at length in the high seat of memory.

The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible.

We met with the poet Frank O'Hara, who was a link between Upper and Lower Bohemia, and who worked at the Museum of Modern Art, where we had hoped to do the readings.

Isn't it wonderful how dogs can win friends and influence people without ever reading a book.

One way of reading my life is that I have been in constant search for a father.

I wouldn't mind my book being called an African novel if it didn't invite lazy readings.

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.

So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky.

I judged about a zillion awards this year so Ive been reading a lot of books that just came out.

Finding people who get enormous pleasure from reading books is a more and more unusual experience, and so writers just so much want to be heard.

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.

There is a pleasure unknown to the landsman in reading at sea.

We agreed that people are now afraid of the English language. He [T.S. Eliot] said it came of being bookish, but not reading books enough. One should read all styles thoroughly.

Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's not a question of gimmicks to "personalize" the author.

Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.

My reading preferences are kind of all over the board - I read nonfiction, I read graphic novels.

I decided I don't want to go for the top job now. I could be working for another 25 years and I'd like to be reading bedtime stories to my children for another two or three years.

Back at his chair he cannot remember what he was reading. He feels the books beside him to find the one that is warm.

Poison Pill is a great reading. The novel ranges from Russian oligarchs to the American worlds of drug research and the equity markets, all of it in a mode of high suspense.

Scientific understanding is often beautiful, a profoundly aesthetic experience which gives pleasure not unlike the reading of a great poem.

Learn to read slow; all other graces will follow in their proper places.