quotations about reading
While we read a novel, we are insane--bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
I tend to believe that computers are drawing kids -- and adults -- away from reading purely because they provide an alternative, vast source of spare-time amusement and entertainment. I recently heard a frightening statistic: there are less than one million true readers in this country (those who read every day instead of one book per year on a beach). Terrifying.
TIM LEBBON
interview, Infinity Plus
The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
To read merely for reading's sake is almost as unprofitable as not reading at all. Setting out, in the first place with a clear idea of what we wish to learn, which is eminently important, we must afterwards, if we would realize what we have read, reperuse it in thought. This only makes it truly our own.
LEO HARTLEY GRINDON
Life: Its Nature, Varieties, and Phenomena
I read my eyes out and can't read half enough.... The more one reads the more one sees we have to read.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to Abigail Adams, December 28, 1794
A house without books is like a room without windows.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
"The Duty of Owning Books", Manford's Magazine, Volume 30
Multifarious reading weakens the mind like smoking, and is an excuse for its lying dormant.
F. W. ROBERTSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Reading is the way out of ignorance, and the road to achievement.
BEN CARSON
Think Big
To read is to enter an intercourse with a text.
VARUN BEGLEY
"The Unbearable Freud"
Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
SAUL BELLOW
Him With His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories
A good reader is nearly as rare as a good writer. People bring their prejudices, whether friendly or adverse. They are lamp and spectacles, lighting and magnifying the page.
ROBERT ELDRIDGE ARIS WILLMOTT
Pleasures, Objects and Advantages of Literature
It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.
JOHANNES KEPLER
attributed, The Martyrs of Science
By reading we acquaint ourselves in a very extensive manner with the affairs, actions, and thoughts of the living and the dead, in the most remote nations and in the most distant ages; and that with as much ease as though they lived in our own age and nation.
ISAAC WATTS
The Improvement of the Mind
Some people read too much: the bibliobuli ... who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through the most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.
H. L. MENCKEN
"Minority Report", Notebooks
One can read all one wants, and spend eternities in front of a blackboard with a tutor, but one is not going to learn to swim until one gets in the water.
DAVID MAMET
True and False
Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?
DAVID BALDACCI
The Camel Club
If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.
STEPHEN KING
On Writing
What is twice read is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Idler, No. 74
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
I will read anything rather than work.
JEAN KERR
introduction, Please Don't Eat the Daisies