Reading Quotes

When I left Iowa, I definitely never wanted to stand in front of a group of academics again and see if they approved of me. I made up my mind to take my work to the actual reading public.

Best-sellerism is the star system of the book world. A "best seller" is a celebrity among books. It is a book known primarily (sometimes exclusively) for its well-knownness.

I find reading screenplays difficult, as they're only a roadmap for what a movie might end up being.

I first told the idea to an editor I had met who, after reading one of my novels for adults that was set in a high school, had an idea that I might write something for children.

Adverbs is a book about love, and I thought that was pretty cheerful, but people who are reading it now are telling me that it's actually quite dark.

What you don't read is often as important as what you do read.

I go to bed early and rise late and feel as if I have hardly slept, probably because I have been reading almost the entire time.

If you enjoy books with happy endings than you are better off reading some other book.

Sometime during your life—in fact, very soon—you may find yourself reading a book, and you may notice that a book’s first sentence can often tell you what sort of story your book contains.

Every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, "The world is quiet here," as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.

It is often said that reading is a gift, but to my mind that is an insufficient description, for the size of the gift of reading is so vast that it is difficult to see what is outside its wrapping.

Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another.

Wicked people never have time for reading. It's one of the reasons for their wickedness.

I'm a believer in the benefits of translation. It's a necessity and a privilege - it would be awful to be limited to reading authors who's work was composed in the languages I happen to have learned.

I love being on stage if I'm not on a set. If I'm at home, I'm usually in my office editing or reconstructing my website or whatever it may be. I just love putting creativity into a performance.

I don't necessarily think I look to books for ideas, but sometimes when I'm in the process of reading a great book, I just think about it all of the time.

You can recognize in your own reading habits what writers are doing that works and what doesn't. I'm becoming much more aware of that after reading a decade of student stories.

I don't read horror, ever. When I was 15, I made the mistake of reading part of 'The Exorcist.' It was the first and last horror book I've ever opened.

On my reading of history people who want to bring us the best are usually the people we ought to be afraid of.

You cannot get PTSD from reading a book or from hearing a story, even repeated stories over and over.

A book lives as long as it is unfathomed.

In the compact between novelist and reader, the novelist promises to lie, and the reader promises to allow it.

I can't claim to be disenchanted "with the current state of fiction" because I read so little of it. My reading is mostly drawn to history.

Above all, a book is a riverbank for the river of language. Language without the riverbank is only television talk - a free fall, a loose splash, a spill.

Just like I am obsessed with the history of fashion, I love reading about the history of makeup.

I think I write what's interesting to me, and so if I'm reading I like to have a very thorough idea of a character in a book that's by someone else.

If I'm at somebody's house and they have magazines on the table and people are chatting, I feel almost a physical urge to start reading the magazines instead of talking to people.

Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose--what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events?--and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith all along.

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.

I rely on Taegan Goddard's Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It's an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.

I'm not only a songwriter but I'm a massive music fan and I love going to shows. It's different than reading a book.

Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing

We never tire of the friendships we form with books.

If I had to give up reading or give up listening to music, I suspect I'd stick with the music.

The secret to speed-reading is moving your lips faster.

It is a reading age, a preaching age, a working age, but it is not a praying age.

Speech recognition is utterly crap for writing fiction. If you try reading a novel aloud you'll soon figure out why - written prose style is utterly unlike the spoken word.

I'm terrible at reading fiction. I don't have the attention span - it's awful.

The act of reading is so intimate that readers are unpredictable.

Sometimes I don't like the books that I'm reading.

What I was reading was already part of my psyche, but finally someone else was saying it's okay to walk alone.

For I too liked reading, thought of a frivolous and childish kind; I could not digest or comprehend the serious or substantial.

When you're reading from a different language that's different from your own, it's not the same as being fluent.

My whole life is reading tabloid magazines. It’s really sad, because that’s what my show is all about — what is going on with celebrities. So I have to know everything.

I'm reading George Saunders's story collection, "Tenth of December." He was my mentor at the University of Syracuse. The stories are mind-blowing like everyone says.

As a rule it usually takes three or four readings for me to be interested in a script, and if I'm interested I'll read it three or four times before I make a strong decision

Five to 10 years from now, if not sooner, the vast majority of 'The New Republic' readers are likely to be reading it on a tablet.

I'm reading Joe Eszterhas biography; it's fabulous. Every time he made a movie, he fought with the director or the producer over the ending.

Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan's 'Atonement,' I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them.

My wife and I just started listening to the late Beethoven Quartets together, an activity I recommend for all married couples, but that doesn't really mean that I'm finished reading.