Books And Reading Quotes

The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it ~ James Bryce

You're awfully quiet."

Her head snapped the other way, heat creeping up into her cheeks as she focused on the ocean below. "Just waiting for all of this to sink in."

"Oh." He chuckled. "I was hoping you were staring at me because you liked what you saw."

Clio grinned, shaking her head. "I thought you were concentrating on the road."

He pulled into a cobblestone driveway. The truck vibrated as they rumbled over the uneven surface. When he stopped in front of a cottage, he turned off the engine and met her eyes. "I have a hard time concentrating on anything but you when you're around."

Her heart pounded. "No one's ever had that problem around me before."

"I call bullshit." He rolled his eyes. "I've been wishing you'd notice me since the day we met."
Her jaw dropped. "I always notice you. Why do you think I'm at the theater site so often?"

He reached over to run a finger along her jawline. "You're beautiful, Clio. But you're so busy with your books and reading about the past, you must not notice the effect you have on everyone in the present. ~ Lisa Kessler

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

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

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

A library is a hospital for the mind. - Anonymous ~ Alvin Toffler

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

I have a household of good books, and reading tends to take for me the place of experience - or rather to become itself experience concentrated. You will say this is a dull picture, but I cultivate dulness in a world grown too noisy. ~ Henry James

I think of my own work as part of a decades-long conversation about books and reading with people I will mainly never meet. ~ Michael Dirda

I don't want anyone reading my writing to think about style. I just want them to be in the story. ~ Willa Cather

There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Memorizing, guessing, looking at pictures, predicting, substituting, and skipping, are not reading; they are very bad habits. ~ Phyllis Schlafly

The library was open for one hour after school let out. I hid there, looking at art books and reading poetry. ~ Lynda Barry

To read the papers and to listen to the news ... one would think the country is in terrible trouble. You do not get that impression when you travel the back roads and the small towns do care about their country and wish it well. ~ Charles Kuralt

Oh, maybe a little treasure for the more rabid Incunks, the collectors and the academics who maintained their positions in large part by examining the literary equivalent of navel-lint in each other's abstruse journals; ambitious, overeducated goofs who had lost touch with what books and reading were actually about and could be content to go on spinning straw into footnoted fool's gold for decades on end. ~ Stephen King

There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away ... ~ Emily Dickinson

Force yourself to reflect on what you read, paragraph by paragraph. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I started to read at a very early age, and I just thought that books and reading were really the most wonderful thing that life had to offer. I think I wrote my very first piece of fiction at the age of 12, but then I didn't write any more for quite a long time. ~ Carol Windley

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of physical evidence we have that people are still thinking. ~ Jerry Seinfeld

I was looking at books and reading the indexes and finding a next book and reading that book, and then from that index ... It was a version of surfing the internet before the internet. I was surfing the New York Public Library. It was back when you had to fill out a form and put it in a chute. ~ Lisa Yuskavage

There is as much trickery required to grow rich by a stupid book as there is folly in buying it. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

You want weapons? We're in a library! Books! The best weapons in the world! ~ The Doctor

One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper. ~ Michael Cunningham

The stories were always looking for a way to be told, to be brought to life through books and reading. That was how they crossed over from their world into ours. ~ John Connolly

In the finest critics one hears the full cry of the human. They tell one why it matters to read. ~ Harold Bloom

The man who reads only for improvement is beyond the hope of much improvement before he begins. ~ Jonathan Daniels

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return. ~ Salman Rushdie

In the best travel books the word alone is implied on every exciting page, as subtle and ineradicable as a watermark. ~ Paul Theroux

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy. ~ Edward P. Morgan

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message from the dead - from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers. ~ Charles Kingsley

A tried and true way to get your children interested in books and reading is to read to them when they are young. ~ Soraya Diase Coffelt

Beware that the one who reads is the same as the book, the same as what is read, the same as the speaker and the same as what is spoken without being the word. ~ Mohammed Dib

For most people bedtime was early, although Cicero admitted to writing speeches or books and reading papers at night (there was a Latin word for it, lucubrare - to work by lamplight). ~ Anthony Everitt

It has always been a great comfort to me that I could bring a book anywhere, to any place. To any part of my life. ~ Anton DiSclafani

Parents often ask - how do I get my child interested in books and reading?

One tried and true way that my late husband and I used was paying them to read. For each book that my sons read, we paid them $1. They soon developed a love for reading and forgot all about the money. Amazing but true! ~ Soraya Diase Coffelt

The way a book is read - which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book - can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it. ~ Norman Cousins

Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense. ~ Ethan Coen

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum. ~ Elbert Hubbard

Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes ~ John Le Carre

Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world! ~ Neil Gaiman

When I got [my] library card, that was when my life began. ~ Rita Mae Brown

I do not think anyone can read War and Peace too much. I read it six times ... ~ Maxwell Perkins

I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense. ~ Harold S. Kushner

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents. ~ Ezra Pound

I'm kind of old-school and love nothing more than sitting, opening a book, and reading it. But I also love listening to audio books. ~ Nick Cave

Stephen King fans are the enlightened ones. Their opinion of your work could never be bad. Mr. King has shown them, in so many ways what to look for. Good or bad, accept their counsel and build on it. It's not about you. It's about the story. ~ A.K. Kuykendall

Like all collectors, I exist in a perpetual state of want that bears no reasonable relationship to the quantity of unread books mounting up on my shelves. ~ Pamela Paul

While running simple errands I often became hopelessly confused in the maze of crowded, filthy streets that began twenty paces beyond the north gate of the bridge, and as I limped back to my shelves of books I would feel as if I were returning from exile. ~ Ross King

Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it. ~ John Waters

They just like to look strange and mysterious. When you get past all the boa feathers, every woman born in this world wants a strong man who knows her like a book, who's not only her lover but he who keepeth Israel. Stupid, isn't it?'
'She wants a father instead of a husband, then.'
'That's what it amounts to,' she said. 'The books are right on the score. ~ Harper Lee

Read thought-provoking books. Give long hugs. Grow your own vegetables. Help a neighbor grow theirs. Grind your own coffee. Take a walk in the sunshine. Talk to strangers. Ask questions. Look deeply into people's eyes. Listen. Listen some more. Go somewhere alone. Listen to your own soul. Make something beautiful. Make something messy. Write a letter. Write a poem. Go to the park. Play with your children. Ask them questions. Listen. Listen some more. Make your life beautiful. Plant flowers. Chase dreams. Smile. Cry. Laugh. Hope. Try. Fail. Try again. And again.
Peace and happiness come from you, not to you. Don't seek them. Create them.
And then help others to do the same.
You get one life. Live it well. ~ L.R. Knost

Discovering a note in the mending basket, Phoebe plucked it out and unfolded it. She instantly recognized West's handwriting.

Unemployed Feline Seeking Household Position


To Whom It May Concern,
I hereby offer my services as an experienced mouser and personal companion. References from a reputable family to be provided upon request. Willing to accept room and board in lieu of pay. Indoor lodgings preferred.

Your servant,
Galoshes the Cat

Glancing up from the note, Phoebe found her parents' questioning gazes on her. "Job application," she explained sourly. "From the cat."
"How charming," Seraphina exclaimed, reading over her shoulder.
"'Personal companion,' my foot," Phoebe muttered. "This is a semi-feral animal who has lived in outbuildings and fed on vermin."
"I wonder," Seraphina said thoughtfully. "If she were truly feral, she wouldn't want any contact with humans. With time and patience, she might become domesticated."
Phoebe rolled her eyes. "It seems we'll find out."
The boys returned from the dining car with a bowl of water and a tray of refreshments. Galoshes descended to the floor long enough to devour a boiled egg, an anchovy canapé, and a spoonful of black caviar from a silver dish on ice. Licking her lips and purring, the cat jumped back into Phoebe's lap and curled up with a sigh.
"I'd say she's adjusting quite well," Seraphina commented with a grin, and elbowed Phoebe ge ~ Lisa Kleypas

How could it be that I wanted those scary narrow streets and books and coffee shops for her so much more than she wanted them for herself? ~ Rufi Thorpe

Books are infinite in number and time is short. The secret of knowledge is to take what is essential. Take that and try to live up to it. ~ Swami Vivekananda

People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you'd believe. ~ Neil Gaiman

Two well-worn volumes by George Borrow, Lavengro and Romany Rye. The two books are an account of Borrow's time among the Gypsies and what he learned there, and I was delighted. ~ Louis L'Amour

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I am drawn mostly, insistently to the human voice. How powerful and necessary the solo voice, the experience of being someone, something else for a little while. This is and will remain literature's killer app, the thing most impervious to threat by everything that's not the word. ~ Ander Monson

...Oh god. I'm one of those girls."
"What girls?" he asked, perplexed.
"Those girls. The ones in all those books and TV shows. Some dumb high school girl falls in love with some supernatural guy, and he's all, 'Behold, I am five million years old!' and she's all, 'Oh my god, how can you ever love pathetic little me!' and he's like, 'Because of destiny!' or whatever. It's just so...ew. You know? ~ Lindsay Ribar

What is literature, and why do I try to write about it? I don't know. Likewise, I don't know why I go on living, most of the time. But this not knowing is precisely what I want to preserve. As readers, the closest way we can engage with a literary work is to protect its indeterminacy; to return ourselves and it to a place that precludes complete recognition. Really, when I'm reading, all I want is to stand amazed in front of an unknown object at odds with the world. ~ M. John Harrison

If you could meet any character from literature, who would it be?

I would not want characters to come to my world. They'd lose their special qualities, the perfect amount of what I should know about them. On the other hand, I could go to theirs because they would not have any preconceptions of who I was. I'd like to hang out with the Cheshire cat, learn how to disappear, and speak in smart illogic. He would look exactly like his pen-and-ink illustration by Tenniel. I'd be rendered in pen and ink, too. That would be required for entering a pen-and-ink world with its particular dimensional strangeness. ~ Amy Tan

I lay on the bed and lost myself in stories. I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyways. ~ Neil Gaiman

Dear patient (first name, last name)! You are presently located in our experimental state hospital. The measures taken to save your life were drastic, extremely drastic (circle one). Our finest surgeons, availing themselves of the very latest achievements of modern medicine, performed one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten operations (circle one) on you. They were forced, acting wholly in your interest to replace certain parts of your organism with parts obtained from other persons, in strict accordance with Federal Law (Rev. Stat. Comm. 1-989/0-001/89/1). The notice you are now reading was thoughtfully prepared in order to help you make the best possible adjustment to these new if somewhat unexpected circumstances in your life, which, we hasten to remind you, we have saved. Although it was found necessary to remove your arms, legs, spine, skill, lungs, stomach, kidneys, liver, other (circle one or more), rest assured that these mortal remains were disposed of in a manner fully in keeping with the dictates of your religion; they were, with the proper ritual, interred, embalmed, mummified, buried at sea, cremated with the ashes scattered in the wind - preserved in an urn - thrown in the garbage (circle one). The new form in which you will henceforth lead a happy and healthy existence may possibly occasion you some surprise, but we promise that in time you will become, as indeed all our dear patients do, quite accustomed to it We have supplemented your organi ~ Stanisław Lem

But by that time Lady Harman had acquired the habit of reading and the habit of thinking over what she read, and from that it is an easy step to thinking over oneself and the circumstances of one's own life. The one thing trains for the other. ~ H.G.Wells

Remember that a little learning can be a pleasant thing. Italy gives much, in beauty, gaiety, diversity of arts and landscapes, good humor and energy - willingly, without having to be coaxed or courted. Paradoxically, she requires (as do other countries, probably more so) and deserves some preparation as background to enhance her pleasures. It is almost impossible to read a total history of Italy; there was no united country until a hundred years ago, no single line of power, no concerted developments. It is useful, however, to know something about what made Siena run and stop, to become acquainted with the Estes and the Gonzagas, the Medicis and the Borgias, the names that were the local history. It helps to know something about the conflicts of the medieval church with the Holy Roman Empire, of the French, Spanish and early German kings who marked out large chunks of Italy for themselves or were invited to invade by a nervous Italian power. Above all, it helps to turn the pages of a few art and architecture books to become reacquainted with names other those of the luminous giants.

The informed visitors will not allow himself to be cowed by the deluge of art. See what interests or attracts you; there is no Italian Secret Service that reports on whether you have seen everything. If you try to see it all except as a possible professional task, you may come to resist it all. Relax, know what you like and don't like - not the worst of measures - and let the rest go. ~ Kate Simon

In books, coaching sessions, and networking events aimed at the white-collar unemployed, the seeker soon encounters ideologies that are explicitly hostile to any larger, social understanding of his or her situation. The most blatant of these, in my experience, was the EST-like, victim-blaming ideology represented by Patrick Knowles and the books he recommended to his boot-camp participants. Recall that at the boot camp, the timid suggestion that there might be an outer world defined by the market or ruled by CEOs was immediately rebuked; there was only us, the job seekers. It was we who had to change. In a milder form, the constant injunction to maintain a winning attitude carries the same message: look inward, not outward; the world is entirely what you will it to be. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

The young man who addresses himself in stern earnest to organizing his life-his habits, his associations, his reading, his study, his work-stands far more chance of rising to a position affording him opportunity to exercise his organizing abilities than the fellow who dawdles along without chart or compass, without plan or purpose, without self-improvement and self-discipline. ~ B.C. Forbes

You can use reading as a food for the ego. It is very subtle. You can become knowledgeable; then it is dangerous and harmful. Then you are poisoning yourself, because knowledge is not knowing, knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom has nothing to do with knowledge. Wisdom can exist in total ignorance also. If you use reading just as a food for the mind, to increase your memory, then you are in a wrong direction. But reading can be used in a different way; then reading is as beautiful as anything else in life ~ Osho

I can't read all the books I want to read, I can't watch all the phenomena that interest me in the world. The work calls me, and sometimes I wonder whether this is an obsession and I should drop it, or it's a necessity I'm obliged to fulfill. ~ James Hillman

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.
Night, sleep, and the stars. ~ Walt Whitman

The place trembled with sound. I didn't need to do anything. They would do it all. But you had to be careful. Drunk as they were they could immediately detect any false gesture, any false word. You could never underestimate an audience. They had paid to get in; they had paid for drinks; they intended to get something and if you didn't give it to them they'd run you right into the ocean. ~ Charles Bukowski

RE: Kindle, iPad, et cetera: For a researcher, these new ways of accessing information are just extraordinary. I thing it introduces the possibility of a new standard of cognitive exactness and precision. ~ Rebecca Goldstein, author of Properties of Light: A Novel of Love, Betrayal and Quantum Physics. ~ Leah Price

I suppose that literature as it is won't die, science fiction included. But games are becoming an extremely important part of the science fiction world, including games that are adapted from books (or vice versa: books that are adapted from games). It's wonderful to have the opportunity to play and see your favorite characters on the screen, but the opportunity to read a book does not become less attractive. ~ Sergei Lukyanenko

I love books. I love that moment when you open one and sink into it you can escape from the world, into a story that's way more interesting than yours will ever be. ~ Elizabeth Scott

It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants
of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the
realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and
abstruse books of philosophy. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

A twisted spine condemned him to walk with a limp, but as he said famously, "I do not limp when I read, nor when I write. ~ George R.R. Martin

Very young children love and demand stories, and can understand complex matters presented as stories, when their powers of comprehending general concepts, paradigms, are almost nonexistent. ~ Oliver Sacks

Burns immediately left the class, and going into the small inner room where the books were kept, returned in half a minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied together at one end. This ominous tool she presented to Miss Scatcherd with a respectful curtesy; then she quietly, and without being told, unloosed her pinafore, and the teacher instantly and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs. Not a tear rose to Burns' eye; and, while I paused from my sewing, because my fingers quivered at this spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, not a feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression. "Hardened girl!" exclaimed Miss Scatcherd; "nothing can correct you of your slatternly habits: carry the rod away." Burns obeyed: I looked at her narrowly as she emerged from the book-closet; she was just putting back her handkerchief into her pocket, and the trace of a tear glistened on her thin cheek. ~ Charlotte Bronte

After 19 years of experimenting, a thousand mistakes, over 400 books, at least 200 bad diets ... and a partridge in a pear tree, I have found what I believe are the best answers this planet has to offer about living a healthy, happy, and balanced life. ~ Marilu Henner

I love to both give and receive very old books. ~ Augusten Burroughs

If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense. ~ C.S. Lewis

I'm completely library educated. I've never been to college. I went down to the library when I was in grade school in Waukegan, and in high school in Los Angeles, and spent long days every summer in the library. I used to steal magazines from a store on Genesee Street, in Waukegan, and read them and then steal them back on the racks again. That way I took the print off with my eyeballs and stayed honest. I didn't want to be a permanent thief, and I was very careful to wash my hands before I read them. But with the library, it's like catnip, I suppose: you begin to run in circles because there's so much to look at and read. And it's far more fun than going to school, simply because you make up your own list and you don't have to listen to anyone. When I would see some of the books my kids were forced to bring home and read by some of their teachers, and were graded on - well, what if you don't like those books? ~ Ray Bradbury

The Internet has given us the illusion of intimacy. We read someone's books, articles, sermons, or watch their videos online, and we feel we know them, so why not share what we think is wrong? But that illusion of intimacy is just that – an illusion. It distracts us from the important principle of reaching out to them personally first, and making the sometimes difficult effort of keeping it private and saving the relationship. ~ Phil Cooke

I had/have a habit of sending books out before they're ready. And then I edit with almost absurd intensity. But I've done about a book a year. ~ Shane McCrae