READING QUOTES
quotations about reading
Studious let me sit,
And hold high converse with the mighty Dead.
JAMES THOMSON
"Winter", The Seasons
The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world.
LIN YUTANG
The Importance of Living
We read to know we're not alone.
WILLIAM NICHOLSON
Shadowlands
Everyone is a reader.... Some just haven't found their book yet.
ANONYMOUS
To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.
W. H. AUDEN
"Prologue: Reading", The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays
What is reading but silent conversation.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
The more that you read,
The more things you will know.
The more that you learn,
The more places you'll go.
DR. SEUSS
I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!
I read everywhere. It's like a bodily function. I don't need quiet. I write and read with the TV on. I follow the TV show while I read. TV doesn't require a lot of brainpower.
CHRIS ABANI
The Boston Globe, March 22, 2014
He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Love's Labour's Lost
It's called reading. It's how people install new software into their brains.
RANDY GLASBERGEN
The Rotarian, April 1999
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
VOLTAIRE
attributed, Best Thoughts of Best Thinkers
I'm not addicted to reading. I can quit as soon as I finish the next chapter.
ANONYMOUS
Every reader reads himself out of the book that he reads; nay, has he a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with the author's.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
"First Epistle", Epistles
Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.
ANNA QUINDLEN
How Reading Changed My Life
Reading ... the best state possible in which to keep absolute loneliness at bay.
WILLIAM STYRON
Sophie's Choice
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.... The man who never reads lives only one.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
A Dance with Dragons
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine -- they are the life, the soul of reading.
LAURENCE STERN
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Think before you speak. Read before you think.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
The Fran Lebowitz Reader
The book is finished by the reader. A good novel should invite the reader in and let the reader participate in the creative experience and bring their own life experiences to it, interpret with their own individual life experiences. Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
interview, Identity Theory, November 16, 2000
We may read, and read, and read again, and still find something new, something to please, and something to instruct.
JAMES HURDIS
The Village Curate: A Poem