Book Reading Quotes

My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books. ~ Tony Judt

I was in a store in Halifax, Nova Scotia that I love, sort of like an environmental friendly sort of store. But they had a great book section. So I went in there all the time. The woman who worked there - which I feel so bad; I've forgotten her name - she handed me the book and she said, "Hey, you should read this. I think it would make a good movie." I remember reading the back of it and I was like, "Huh." Then I just devoured the book and I was so moved by it and said, "Why don't we start developing this into a film?" So that's how it [Into the Forest] all started. ~ Ellen Page

I've been reading the books. It's the origination, it's the primary source. You should always go back to the books. ~ Benedict Cumberbatch

Reading well makes children more interesting both to themselves and others, a process in which they will develop a sense of being separate and distinct selves. ~ Harold Bloom

I talked once with a cabdriver who had spent years in prison. He said he had no idea that the world was something he could be interested in. And then he read a book. ~ Marilynne Robinson

I saw a poet chase a butterfly in a meadow. He put his net on a bench where a boy sat reading a book. It's a misfortune that it is usually the other way round. ~ Karl Kraus

To make a book is as much a trade as to make a clock; something more than intelligence is required to become an author. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

There is no shortage of wonderful writers. What we lack is a dependable mass of readers. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

When you broadcast your book reading voluntarily, it creates moments of fascinating serendipity. ~ Clive Thompson

A book is maybe about 350 pages, and the prose allows for readers to get a glimpse into the internal lives of the characters. A screenplay is 120 pages, and it's all dialogue and action. The pacing of films is different, the structure is often different, and the internal lives of the characters must come across through the acting. Movies are just a different experience than reading - so it just depends on what an individual prefers. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Any chemist reading this book can see, in some detail, how I have spent most of my mature life. They can become familiar with the quality of my mind and imagination. They can make judgements about my research abilities. They can tell how well I have documented my claims of experimental results. Any scientist can redo my experiments to see if they still work-and this has happened! I know of no other field in which contributions to world culture are so clearly on exhibit, so cumulative, and so subject to verification. ~ Donald Cram

Why do you keep reading a book? Usually to find out what happens. Why do you give up and stop reading it? There may be lots of reasons. But often the answer is you don't care what happens. So what makes the difference between caring and not caring? The author's cruelty. And the reader's sympathy ... it takes a mean author to write a good story. ~ Gail Carson Levine

Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Children start off reading in books about lions and giraffes and so on, but they also-if theyre lucky enough and have reasonable privileges of any human being-are able to go into a garden and turn over stone and see a worm and see a slug and see an ant. ~ David Attenborough

In The Last of Her Kind, Sigrid Nunez once again creates characters of such depth and situations of such vivid moral complexity that reading these pages is like living them. Only as I closed the book did I sadly realize that Georgette and Ann weren't my neighbors. But happily I can revisit them again, and again, in this beautiful and absorbing novel. ~ Margot Livesey

I've always loved reading fantasy. I used to pick out all the books in the library that had the little unicorn sticker on the side to show that they were fantasy. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

One of my favorite times was sitting reading quote books, which I did for hours on end ... ~ Hillary Clinton

Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading? ~ Henry David Thoreau

What is more important in a library than anything else - than everything else - is the fact that it exists. ~ Archibald MacLeish

Some books should be tasted,
Some devoured,
But only a few
Should be chewed and digested
Thoroughly ~ Cornelia Funke

I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Books only spoil the originality of genius. Very well for those who can't think for themselves - But when one has made up one's opinions, there is no use in reading. ~ Maria Edgeworth

Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us. ~ C.S. Lewis

Authors do not need to offer us the answers to such weighty questions such as how to live and prepare us to accept death. The aim of a writer's is to frame worldly questions that allow all readers too independently and jointly explore life-altering questions in a way that satisfies the fabric of thought corresponding to our respective times. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Designers provide ways into - and out of - the flood of words by breaking up text into pieces and offering shortcuts and alternate routes through masses of information. ( ... ) Although many books define the purpose of typography as enhancing the readability of the written word, one of design's most humane functions is, in actuality, to help readers avoid reading. ~ Ellen Lupton

Indeed, there is something about reading in a restaurant that is borderline romantic. Leaning back in that corner booth, an evocative title in our hands, a stale cup of java in front of us, every so often bolting forward to jot a phrase onto the napkin, we look like, well, poets-unknown belletrists scraping through the hardscrabble years and awaiting the distinction that is imminent. the waiter of waitress refills our cup, we drop a memorable apothegm or two, share a laugh fraught with meaning, scope out the joint, and return to our tome. Nonbiblioholics strain to espy our title; conversation is struck up on things Kafkaesque and Kierkegaardian; and we forge a genuine biblioholic simpatico with all around. ~ Tom Raabe

He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born. ~ Henry David Thoreau

In the old days people had far fewer channels in which to place their imaginative time. There's definitely more competition for time ... and yet people seem to be reading [books] as much. ~ Douglas Coupland

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. ~ Hideo Kojima

Trust not my reading, nor my observations, Which with experimental seal do warrant The tenor of my book. ~ William Shakespeare

The future of English fiction may rest with this Unknown Public - a reading public of three millions which lies right out of the pale of true literary civilization - which is now waiting to be taught the difference between a good book and a bad. ~ Wilkie Collins

If you read only the best, you will have no need of reading the other books, because the latter are nothing but a rehash of the best and the oldest. To read Shakespeare, Plato, Dante, Milton, Spenser, Chaucer, and their compeers in prose, is to read in condensed form what all others have diluted. ~ Anna Brackett

Many people think they cannot have knowledge or understanding of God without reading books. But hearing is better than reading, and seeing is better than hearing. Hearing about Benares is different from reading about it; but seeing Benares is different from either hearing or reading. ~ Ramakrishna

We are now in want of an art to teach how books are to be read rather than to read them. Such an art is practicable. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

There weren't too many books by women that were taught in school, so I read those on my own, and the books I read were as accessible as the ones we were reading in school. ~ Jane Smiley

I was so long writing my review that I never got around to reading the book. ~ Groucho Marx

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing. ~ Georg C. Lichtenberg

In times of struggle, there are as many reasons not to read as there are to breathe. Don't you have bigger things to do? Reading, let alone re-reading, is the terrain of milquetoasts and mopey spinsters. At life's ugliest junctures the very act of opening a book can smack of cowardly escapism. Who chooses to read when there's work to be done?

Call me a coward if you will, but when the line between duty and sanity blurs, you can usually find me curled up with a battered book, reading as if my mental health depended on it. And it does, for inside the books I love I find food, respite, escape, and perspective. ~ Erin Blakemore

Most novels put out by small or corporate presses don't really sell that well - usually a thousand copies or so. Working with a small press, you have to be willing to book reading tours, plan events, make contacts with other small press authors, and find new ways of getting word about your new work out there. ~ Joe Meno

Peter Conners stunning prose poems are packed with keen sensitivity, dreaminess, and wit. I love his time travels, the vibrant layering of image and detail. Try taking walks as you are reading this book- the dazzle of landscapes, inner and outer, feel replenished and rich. This is language and vision I want to come home to again and again. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Reading old travel books or novels set in faraway places, spinning globes, unfolding maps, playing world music, eating in ethnic restaurants, meeting friends in cafes ... all these things are part of never-ending travel practice, not unlike doing scales on a piano, shooting free-throws, or meditating. ~ Phil Cousineau

Amongst the friends of Allah (Awliya), the Qur'an is considered as a love letter from Allah, which inevitably is read continuously to remind them of their Beloved. ~ Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri

Being in front of an audience makes me feel alive. Being with friends makes me feel alive. I've done some crazy stuff in my time and yet I can feel infinitely alive curled up on a sofa reading a book. So, what makes me feel alive? I guess it's realizing I am part of the world around me. ~ Benedict Cumberbatch

I have always loved books, and as a mother, I wanted to share my passion for reading with my children. ~ Aerin Lauder

Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads. ~ Lord Chesterfield

Reading a poem is a real thing, a worthy thing. So to be there right with the reader at that moment is part of the effect of a title like "Poem for" something or other. Matt Rohrer does this a lot in his titles, and I think I might have gotten some of the idea to do this, or at least been reminded of how it can work, from his recent amazing books. ~ Matthew Zapruder

Who needs sleep when you have a good book? ~ Elizabeth Ann Patterson

You will, I am sure, agree with me that ... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I want to be with my wife. Sitting on a deckchair, sipping some tea, and reading books in a retirement home, in a beautiful and warm place. I'm a romantic guy. ~ Robert Pattinson

They like my books better in England than in France; a translation would be very successful there. ~ Marcel Proust

This is much more than your typical thriller. Tim Johnston has written a book that makes Gone Girl seem gimmicky ... Johnston is an excellent writer. You want to set this one down so you can take a breath, and keep reading
all at the same time. ~ Alan Cheuse

To live fully your well-read life -at any age- it is essential to take your selection of books seriously. When you drift from book to book, you're lulled into thinking that this lack of focus is right and natural - but it's as wrong as can be. Some serendipity in your reading is delightful, but if you wanted to build a house, would you wait for the materials to assemble themselves? - Steve Leveen ~ Pat Williams

Beware
Those Who
Are ALWAYS
READING
BOOKS ~ Charles Bukowski

Reading ... there have been millions and billions and billions and gazillions of people that have lived before all of us. There's no new problem you could have - with your parents, with school, with a bully, with anything. There's no problem you can have that someone hasn't already solved and wrote about it in a book. ~ Will Smith

My purpose is to create a mirror for the reader to see themselves, to create a light for people to see themselves in the characters, pictures, and stories. So they resonate. ~ Kadir Nelson

We can be bought, but we can't be bored. ~ Lynn Fontanne

You should never try and teach a pig to read for two reasons. First, it's impossible; and secondly, it annoys the hell out of the pig!. ~ Will Rogers

For the reader who has put away comic books, but isn't yet ready for editorials in the Daily News. ~ Gloria Steinem

As parents, the most important thing we can do
is read to our children early and often. Reading
is the path to success in school and life. When
children learn to love books, they learn to love
learning. ~ Laura Bush

Where do I find the time for not reading so many books? ~ Karl Kraus

It is amazing how little effort most people make to improve control of their attention. If reading a book seems too difficult, instead of sharpening concentration we tend to set it aside and instead turn on the television, which not only requires minimal attention, but in fact tends to diffuse what little it commands with choppy editing, commercial interruptions, and generally inane content. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Here is the treasure chest of the world - the public library, or a bookstore. ~ Ben Carson

Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother! ~ Charles Baudelaire

I'm not a fan of mysteries, so to prepare for this experience of writing a mystery I started reading the most successful ones in the market in 2012 ... And I realized I cannot write that kind of book. It's too gruesome, too violent, too dark; there's no redemption there. ~ Isabel Allende

As we read spiritually about spiritual things, we open our hearts to God's voice. Sometimes we must be willing to put down the book we are reading and just listen to what God is saying to us through our words. ~ Henri Nouwen

To retire by the age of 35 was my goal. I wasn't sure how I was going to get there though. I knew I would end up owning my own business someday, so I figured my challenge was to learn as much as anyone about all businesses. I believed that every job I took was really me getting paid to learn about a new industry. I spent as much time as I could, learning and reading everything about business I could get my hands on. I used to go into the library for hours and hours reading business books and magazines. ~ Mark Cuban

Only one book is worth reading: the heart. ~ Ajahn Chah

I wasn't a huge fan of the comic book, but I definitely was of the cartoon series. I wasn't much for sitting around and reading as a kid, I preferred to be outside running around and playing sports, but I was absolutely thrilled to get the role of Colossus. I don't think I realised how popular the character was until I got the role and started doing some research; it was then that I really fell in love with the character of Colossus myself. ~ Daniel Cudmore

Research shows us that children who are read to from a very early age are more likely to begin reading themselves at an early age. They're more likely to excell in school. They're more likely to graduate secondary school and go to college. ~ Laura Bush

After all, the world is not a stage-not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches ... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be ... Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it if he wants a safe seat in the audience-let him read someone else. ~ D.H. Lawrence

I love a garden and a book. ~ Eliza Lucas

This must be what an addict feels like, I think,
trying to fight the pull of one last, quick read. My fingers itch toward the binding, and finally, with a sigh of regret, I just grab the book and open it, hungrily reading the story. ~ Jodi Picoult

There is a world of science necessary in choosing books. I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

I was not a comic book reader, but my son is. My son wasn't really interested in reading books, which was hard for me because I love to read. It just didn't come naturally to my boy. So we kind of found comic books because they were fascinating to him. They were great stories. ~ Virginia Madsen

We find little in a book but what we put there. But in great books, the mind finds room to put many things. ~ Joseph Joubert

I'm not saying don't do the work you got, but instead of this two hours of watching TV at the hotel lobby or this three hours of sitting under the pier and reading comic books or worrying about what you're doing ... what value do you have? Can you read? There are people out there who can't read - go read to them. ~ Andy Andrews

I'd go somewhere where no one spoke. I would take a stack of books up to my hips, and I'd read nonstop. And I'd be reading naked. ~ Linda Hamilton

When we wrote that scene about the Sleepy Kittens where he's reading the storybook to the kids, it's like we've had to read these stupid books to our kids, and we all want to just tell our kids, "This is really bad. Don't you know that? Can't you see that?" ~ Cinco Paul

If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell you it again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I'm never ashamed to read a book twice or as many times as I want. We never expect to drink a glass of water just once in our lives. A book can be that essential, too. ~ Natalie Goldberg

The implications are clear: Facebook wants to build an Internet where watching films, listening to music, reading books and even browsing is done not just openly but socially and collaboratively. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Whether the author intended a symbolic resonance to exist in her book is irrelevant. All that matters is whether it's there. Because the book does not exist for the benefit of the author, the book exists for the benefit of YOU. If we as readers can have a bigger and richer experience with the world as a result of reading a symbol and that symbol wasn't intended by the author, WE STILL WIN. ~ John Green

[F]olks would better off dipping their heads in a bucket of liquid [nitrogen] and battering them against a tree very very hard than reading Baxter's Titan. It would not surprise me if reading that book causes birth defects. ~ Stephen Baxter

Some books leave us free and some books make us free. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Writers do not come out of houses without books. ~ Doris Lessing

Madness in Civilization is a brilliant, provocative, and hugely entertaining history of the treatment and mistreatment of the mentally ill. Packed with bizarre details and disturbing facts, Andrew Scull's book offers fresh and compelling insights on the way medicine's inability to solve the mystery of madness has both haunted and shaped two thousand years of culture. Required reading for anyone who has ever gone to a shrink! ~ Dirk Wittenborn

Beppu (n.)
The triumphant slamming shut of a book after reading the final page. ~ Douglas Adams

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

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future. Just ask Ray Bradbury. ~ Kami Garcia

I was reading the poems of Rochester. Rochester made himself out to be bisexual, but I think that was only to shock. Most of his poetry is sexual, even pornographic. ~ Thom Gunn

Consent of the Networked will become the seminal book firmly establishing the responsibility of those who control the architecture and the politics of the network to the citizens who inhabit our new digital world. Consent of the Networked should be required reading for all of those involved in building our networked future as well as those who live in it. ~ Joichi Ito

For at least twenty minutes she handed out the story. The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the scene. Liesel did not. The book thief saw only the mechanics of the words
their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on. Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a period and the next capital letter, there was also Max. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. It he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again? ~ Markus Zusak

The Bible is forbidding when you start to read it. The language is odd. The stories start and stop herkily-jerkily. The characters behave in inexplicable ways. It takes a little bit of time to get into the rhythm of the book. I found reading the first 15 chapters of Genesis very very difficult. Once I got past there, I loved reading, and found it very easy. When you get used to the Bible, it becomes thrilling to read (like any great book - I just had exactly the same experience with the Odyssey). ~ David Plotz

Books are totally useless unless you take their advice. If you just keep reading them, thinking "that's so insightful! that changes everything," but never actually doing anything different, then pretty quickly the feeling will wear off and you'll start searching for another book to fill the void. ~ Aaron Swartz

So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything. ~ William Hazlitt

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Reading a great book causes jolts and frights. ~ Mason Cooley

Certain books come to meet me, as do people. ~ Elizabeth Bowen

It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything. ~ Joseph Brodsky