Read A Book Quotes

Books,' I say sleepily. 'They don't change either. If you read a book and look at it again later on, it's still the same thing. But it's exciting all over again. ~ Truus Matti

People talk about nightfall, or night falling, or dusk falling, and it's never seemed right to me. Perhaps they once meant befalling. As in night befalls. As in night happens. Perhaps they, whoever they were, thought of a falling sun. That might be it, except that that ought to give us dayfall. Day fell on Rupert the Bear. And we know, if we've ever read a book, that day doesn't fall or rise. It breaks. In books, day breaks, and night falls.
In life, night rises from the ground. The day hangs on for as long as it can, bright and eager, absolutely and positively the last guest to leave the party, while the ground darkens, oozing night around your ankles, swallowing for ever that dropped contact lens, making you miss that low catch in the gully on the last ball of the last over. ~ Hugh Laurie

I was standing amid floor-to-ceiling shelves of books in wonder and awe when my view of stories suddenly and forever changed. There were enormous piles of books lying in corners. Books covered the walls. Books even lined the staircases as you went up from one floor to the next. It was as if this used bookstore was not just a place for selling used books; it was like the infrastructure itself was made up of books. There were books to hold more books, stories built out of stories.

I was standing in Daedalus Books in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I had recently read Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a Book. I was alive with the desire to read. But at that particular moment, my glee turned to horror. For whatever reason, the truth of the numbers suddenly hit me. The year before, I had read about thirty books. For me, that was a new record. But then I started counting. I was in my early twenties, and with any luck I'd live at least fifty more years. At that rate, I'd have about 1,500 books in me, give or take.

There were more books than that on the single wall I was staring at.

That's when I had a realization of my mortality. My desire outpaced reality. I simply didn't have the life to read what I wanted to read.

Suddenly my choices in that bookstore became a profound act of deciding. The Latin root of the word decide - cise or cide - is to "cut off' or "kill." The idea is that to choose anything means to kill off other options you m ~ Justin Whitmel Earley

I hate lending, or borrowing - if you want me to read a book, tell me about it, or buy me a copy outright. Your loaned edition sits in my house like a real grievance. And in lieu of lending books, I buy extra copies of those I want to give away, which gives me the added pleasure of buying books I love again and again.
Jonathan Lethem ~ Leah Price

Later that year I happened to read a book by Dr. Neil Fiore that validated Bill's suspicion about being too careful. The book was called The Now Habit and was about overcoming procrastination. Dr. Fiore suggested that succeeding in a career is not unlike walking on a tightrope. The more success we achieve, the higher the rope. As we gain something, we have more to lose. Success causes a ravine beneath our careers that grows more deadly, creating a kind of fear of trying. He said the fear of letting people down is one of the primary reasons people procrastinate. ~ Donald Miller

I'm quite hyper, and my wife would prefer it if I sat down and read a book. ~ Jamie Dornan

But see, that's the thing about movies. Nothing is left to the imagination. You read a book, and you see a picture of the characters and the scenes in your mind. You don't have that with a movie. It's all either up there on the screen laid out for you, or it isn't there at all. ~ Laurie Viera Rigler

This year, more people will use cocaine than will read a book to their children. ~ Michael Scott

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

There is something irrational about reading. Before you read a book, you can know immediately whether or not you are going to like it, just as with people, you can tell just from looking at them whether or not you'll be their friend. You smell it, you sniff it, you wonder whether it's worth spending time in its company. The pages of a book have an invisible alchemy that imprints itself on our brain. A book is a living creature. ~ Jean-Michel Guenassia

I'm a big fan of the local library. I just read a book, but that's another story. ~ British Sea Power

For me music is pretty personal. I generally listen to it alone, and I've never been a lover of concerts. So I don't think I really bond with other people over music. That's not unique to music for me, either. I feel that way about film, television, art, everything. I read a book alone, so why wouldn't I listen to music alone? ~ Rick Moranis

When you read a book put all of your effort into staying present and focus your energy towards the comprehension of each and every word and how you can apply it into your daily life. ~ Matthew Donnelly

Matha had never considered that being female would thwart her so, that it would be a hurdle she had to jump every time she wanted to learn something: to read a book, to shout the answers, to make a bomb, to love a man, to fight for freedom. ~ Namwali Serpell

Also, I had read a book called She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, written by a professor who had gone through transgender surgery, but it took this person well into his thirties to come to terms with the absolute necessity of having to do it. ~ Mercedes Ruehl

The best thing you can do when you're not feeling funny is go out and get more stimuli from the world, get out and walk around, read a book, go talk to some birds or a dog and replenish the well, as it were. ~ Rob Delaney

If I am willing to read a book in its entirety, I will give it five stars. I do not list books that I did not finish; they were not written for me as the audience. ~ Paula Shene

I bailed out on social media for a while, and in short order I found I was able to sit down and read a book again. For the first time in a couple years I could read more than three pages without my brain wandering off into the ether. I drew a direct causal line between all this sort of ratta-tat-tat staccato stimulation that we get from the Internet and my growing inability to sit down and read anything that was longer than 500 words. But for me it came back because those synapses were already latent in my brain. ~ Ron Currie Jr.

Character, I think, is the single most important thing in fiction. You might read a book once for its interesting plot - but not twice. ~ Diana Gabaldon

It made him chuckle that I would read a book, that I had a thought in my head when all I was good for was a cock in the mouth. ~ Pepper Winters

I'd like to read a book sometime. I've never read a book before. That'd be an adventure. I understand they have pages and everything. Yeah, I've got to do that sometime. ~ Frank Oz

Before I went to college I read two books. I read a book "Moral Mazes" by Robert Jackall which is a study of how corporations work, and it's actually a fascinating book, this sociologist, he just picks a corporation at random and just goes and studies the middle managers, not the people who do any of the grunt work and not the big decision makers, just the people whose job is to make sure that things day to day get done, and he shows how even though they're all perfectly reasonable people, perfectly nice people you'd be happy to meet any of them, all the things that they were accomplishing were just incredibly evil. So you have these people in this average corporation, they were making decisions to blow out their worker's eardrums in the factory, to poison the lakes and the lagoons nearby, to make these products that are filled with toxic chemicals that poisoned their customers, not because any of them were bad people and wanted to kill their workers and their neighbourhood and their customers, but just because that was the logic of the situation they were in.

Another book I read was a book "Understanding Power" by Noam Chomsky which kind of took the same sort of analysis but applied it to wider society which you know we're in a situation where it may be filled with perfectly good people but they're in these structures that cause them to continually do evil, to invade countries, to bomb people, to take money from poor people and give it to rich people, to do all th ~ Aaron Swartz

What's the matter with me
I don't have much to say ...
People disagreeing on all just about everything, yeah
Makes you stop and all wonder why
Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street
Who just couldn't help but cry
Oh, this ol' river keeps on rollin', though
No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow
And as long as it does I'll just sit here
And watch the river flow
People disagreeing everywhere you look
Makes you wanna stop and read a book
Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street
That was really shook
But this ol' river keeps on rollin', though
No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow
And as long as it does I'll just sit here
And watch the river flow. ~ Bob Dylan

This afternoon I was sitting quietly with some twenty roughs when I noticed a sudden hush come over the room. I glanced nervously round and observed that forty pairs of eyes were on me ... I was reading a book. They had never seen someone read a book before. They were like natives watching a white man shave. ~ William Donaldson

[W]e wouldn't want to read a book about a perfect character who never struggles with character flaws, a difficult past, or interpersonal conflict. Writers can powerfully connect with readers when they venture to these thin places of pain and brokenness because readers can see themselves in the pain and want to journey from pain and struggle toward redemption or some kind of resolution. ~ Ed Cyzewski

Listen you have to read a book three times before you know it. ~ Sherman Alexie

Tal told me he loved me, and told me and told me, but you don't tell someone that and then tell them they're not experienced enough in bed and should read a book or something to learn, or they should try wearing deep-red lipstick and tight skirts to look hot like their best friend once in a while. If Tal hadn't lied to me when he said he loved me, I might not be without a future right now, a sucker who was so chickenshit she allowed herself to believe a false dream from a false god. I'm not sure I ever even liked Tal, much less loved him. ~ Rachel Cohn

It's hard to be wrongfully accused, but it's worse when the people looking down on you are clods who have never read a book or traveled more than twenty miles from the place they were born. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

When you watch a TV show or a movie, what you see looks like what it physically represents. A man looks like a man, a man with a large bicep looks like a man with a large bicep, and a man with a large bicep bearing the tattoo "Mama" looks like a man with a large bicep bearing the tattoo "Mama."

But when you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create. It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book become one of a million different books, just as an egg becomes one of potentially a million different people when it's approached by a hard-swimming and frisky school of sperm. ~ Mohsin Hamid

(I)f France's righteous bloviating against war makes them your Dashboard Saint of International Integrity, it's either because you are sand-poundingly ignorant of how the world works or it's because you think France's self-interest is more important than America's. If the former applies to you, read a book. If it's the latter, maybe you should move there along with Alec Baldwin, Robert Altman, and the rest of the crowd who promised to leave a long time ago. But whatever you do, don't call France's position principled, because that just insults us both. ~ Jonah Goldberg

As we breathe and live, have a conversation, and you look in someone's eyes, and you see a sunset or have an argument or read a book or see a painting or whatever you do, it influences you. And as you live your art, it changes and grows just like you and your soul or whatever you want to call it. For me, it's never-ending, I call it "the organizer of chaos." That's what I do with this and I present it in a way that I dream. So basically, I'm just sharing my dreams with all of you. ~ Jared Leto

If you read a book about school - someone else's book - you always translate it into your own school experiences. It's describing the student: he's bewildered and lost in a large crowd in a university classroom. You'll visualize that from your own experiences. So, everything you know is what you're really writing. ~ James Salter

I do not read a book; I hold a conversation with the author. ~ Elbert Hubbard

I can't believe that we are calculating the amount of light years used to travel Space-Chase Model 3.0 to Pluto!" shrieked Alice, bouncing up and down in a totally undignified way for her 14-year-old self. "I'm sure what you just said makes perfect sense to you." grumbled Olivia,as she glared at the marble-white,slippery floor of the CAST lobby. Alice stared at her with aggravation. She'd once read a book on face reading, and Olivia's emotions rung clear- It wasn't fair that she was here,and not at home,downloading a hot new song on iTunes or something. Everybody here was totally spaced out. ~ Chloe Gadsby-Jones

I read a book a week. I try to keep my mind working. ~ Emma Roberts

A person should read a book because it speaks to something in his heart. ~ Julia Quinn

When we read a book, our most essential trait - imagination - is given the opportunity to soar. ~ Saint Augustine

There was no manifestation of contemporary culture that did not indicate to my grandmother how steadfast was the nation's decline, how merciless our mental and moral deterioration, how swiftly all-embracing our final decadence. I never saw her read a book again; but she referred to books often - as if they were shrines and cathedrals of learning that television had plundered and then abandoned. ~ John Irving

My idea of a delicious time is to read a book that is wonderful. But the ruling passion of my life is being a seeker after truth and the divine. ~ Bell Hooks

I'm very perverse. If someone tells me I have to read a book, I'm instantly disinclined to do so. ~ Erik Larson

What I fault newspapers for is that day after day they draw our attention to insignificant things whereas only three or four times in our lives do we read a book in which there is something really essential. Since we tear the band off the newspaper so feverishly every morning, they ought to change things and put into the paper, oh, I don't know, perhaps ... Pascal's Pensees! ... and then, in a gilt-edged volume that we open only once in ten years ... we would read that the Queen if Greece has gone to Cannes or that the Princesses de Leon has given a costume ball. This way the proper proportions would be established. ~ Marcel Proust

We do treat books surprisingly lightly in contemporary culture. We'd never expect to understand a piece of music on one listen, but we tend to believe we've read a book after reading it just once. ~ Ali Smith

Your very eyes. How they have always been for me the command to obey, the inviolable and beautiful commandment. No, no, I'm not telling lies. Your appearance in the doorway!
...
You have been my body's health. Whenever I have read a book, it was you I was reading, not the book, you were the book. You were, you were. ~ Robert Walser

You do not have to read a book to understand how the world works. You just have to keep your eyes open. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

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

Directing is a reactionary job more than a creation job. The job is to react whether it's moment one, the first time you read the script or see an article or read a book or notice something happen on the street and have an idea for a movie, and it just continues from there on in. You're just reacting to dialogue, a performance, an audition, a headache, a piece of furniture, a piece of clothing. ~ Jason Reitman

Sit down, have a nice cup of coffee read a book in another language - the fountain of youth! ~ Stephen D. Krashen

It's hard to explain to someone who's never had the experience - the unmistakable, life-altering moment when you read a book and realize that someone out in the world has read your mind and put into words all the thoughts and ideas crashing around inside your own head. For me, it was like Don Swanstrom ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Sometimes people read a book in order to not go on a trip. You read a book instead of going on the trip. And so the travel writer is doing the traveling for you. ~ Paul Theroux

As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Sometimes I forget when I read a book that it didn't exist in English first. ~ Ali Liebegott

I read a book one day and my whole life was changed. ~ Orhan Pamuk

When I read a book, I want you to be reading it at the same time. I want to know what would Amelia think of it. I want you to be mine. I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart, Amy. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

There was I, devouring books and yet allowing a man who had never read a book to walk me home for a bit of harmless fumbling on the front steps. ~ Edna O'Brien

To read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes is a useful exercise; a book which will not repay some hard thought is not worth publishing. ~ Maria Mitchell

Incidentally, I use the word reader very loosely. Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the very first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is-a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary between the two is not as clear as is generally believed)-a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Read a book, and broaden your perspective on life. ~ Marcia Carrington

President Clinton signed a $10 million deal to write a book by 2003. Isn't that amazing? Yes, and get this, not only that, President Bush signed a $10 million deal to read a book by 2003. ~ Conan O'Brien

My necessities were books. I read a book at school, another to and from school, yet another at the beach, which was the closest escape from my father's dying. Though when I walked alone it was far. Though I wasn't allowed to walk alone when younger - so young that my concern wasn't the danger to myself but to the books I'd bring, because they weren't mine, they were everyone's, entrusted to me in return for exemplary behavior, and if I lost even a single book, or let even its corner get nicked by a jitney, the city would come, the city itself, and lock me up in that grim brick jail that, in every feature, resembled the library. ~ Joshua Cohen

My ideal vacation isn't about complex maneuvers. I want to arrive somewhere foreign where I don't speak the language, go hiking, then plop down in a sunny square, have drinks, read a book, and see what happens. ~ Rosecrans Baldwin

People really need to take time and read a book, you know, that's my advice. You could read 'A New Slant on Life,' you could read 'Dianetics.' And I think if you really read it, you'll understand it, but unless you do, you'll speculate. And I think that's a mistake to do that. ~ John Travolta

As we all saw in grade school, once you learn how to read a book, somebody is going to want to write one - that's how authors are made. Once we know how to read our own genetic code, someone is going to want to rewrite that 'text,' tinker with traits - play God, some would say. ~ Gregory Benford

Before I Talk, I Should Read A Book ~ The B-52s

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don't know what's going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don't know at all what you're going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you're a kid and you're reading stories. ~ Haruki Murakami

Keep on reading and if you really like the book do a review so people could get to read a book that they would of not thought that the'll read. ~ Gabby Taylor

We need to actually teach kids that books aren't like broccoli. You don't have to eat every bit on your plate. It's like secret adult's business. It's the secret we never, ever tell our children. No adult ever read a book because it's good for us. We read because it is fun. ~ Jackie French

Imagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years. Imagine a place where not a single person has read a book that is truly about the character at its center. ~ Adam Johnson

Let's leave it for tonight. Is it a decent hour for two middle-aged people to go to bed?' He held out his hand for her.

Half an hour later he exclaimed, 'My God, where did you learn that?'

'I read a book once,' she answered.

'Thank God for literate women,' he said fervently. ~ Kate Wilhelm

I done something bad, it was to believe that to read a book you must be a stupid guy. No people which read they are clever - the guy who said this is stupid guy! ~ Deyth Banger

I would rather make fun of things, and I'm struggling against an inborn fatalism . . . The creative impulse is such a fragile thing, but we have to create now. We owe it to ourselves to do the work. I want to encourage you. If you aspire to write, put aside all the niceties and sureties about what art should be and write something that makes the scales fall from our eyes. Forget the tired axioms about showing and telling, about sense of place - any possible obstruction - and write to destroy complacency, to rattle people, to help people, first and foremost yourself. Lodge your ideas like glass shards in the minds of everyone who would have you believe there's no hope. And read, as often and as violently as you can. If you have friends, as I do, who tacitly believe that it's too much of a chore to read a book, just one fucking book, from start to finish, smash every LCD they own. This is an opportunity. There's too much at stake now to pretend that everything is okay. ~ Dan Piepenbring

The experience of reading a book is always unique. I believe that you render a version of the story, when you read a book, in a way that is unique and special to each person who reads it. ~ Carlton Cuse

When we read a book, we have a blurry image that's kind of physical but blurry. But we have an emotional image also. We have an emotional connection to the character. ~ Niels Arden Oplev

If reading makes you smart then how come when you read a book they have to put the title of the book on the top of every single page? Does anyone get halfway through a book, What the hell am I reading? ~ Brian Regan

Weird people follow you in the streets, you can't sit alone in a restaurant or a cafe and read a book in peace, and I think everybody values those moments of being alone. ~ Winona Ryder

I fantasize about having a manual job where I can come home at night, read a book and not feel responsible for what will happen the next day. ~ Jodie Foster

Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Faerie Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrews's Sermons? ~ Charles Lamb

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. ~ Groucho Marx

Day'll come, when he's grown and it's too late, that you'd give a kingdom to go back and spend a single hour with your son as a boy. To hold him. Read a book to him. Throw a ball with a person in whose eyes you can do no wrong. He doesn't see your failings yet. He looks at you with pure love and it won't last, so you revel in it while it's here. ~ Blake Crouch

When you read a book, book also reads you! The book will know who you are from the sentences you underline! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Many adults, whether consciously or unconsciously, find it beneath their adult dignity to do anything as childish as read a book, think a thought, or get an idea. Adults are rarely embarrased at having forgotten what little algebra or geography they once learned ~ Isaac Asimov

We don't want to read a book. We want to live an experience. ~ Carolyn Wheat

I just read a book on how to get control of my time and therefore of my life. My time has always had a tendency to slip away from me and do as it pleases. My life follows it, like a puppy after an untrained bird dog. Come night, my life shows up, usually covered with mud and full of stickers, exhausted but grinning happily. My time never returns. ~ Patrick F. McManus

Free time is a terrible thing to waste. Read a book. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

You may dream freely when you listen to music as well as when you look at painting. When you read a book you are the slave of the author's mind. ~ Paul Gauguin

You want to read a book? That requires introspection. It requires time away from people and time away from the constant need to communicate and to connect. ~ Gary Shteyngart

That chain of relationships made me think of how connections are made
you read a book, you meet a person, you have a single experience, and your life is changed in some way. No act, therefore, however small, should be dismissed or ignored. ~ Howard Zinn

When you read a book, you create that tonal bandwidth. You set a tone for yourself, as you're reading it, in which everything exists within the world of your imagination. ~ Nina Jacobson

If I had a dollar for every time I couldn't sleep, I could buy a billion locks and finally read a book in peace. ~ Aesop Rock

As a youngster, I had friends who became lawyers and doctors, and I was as idealistic as anybody. When I was in the Army, I read a book by Adlai Stevenson. He said law was as noble as saving a person's life. So at one point, I felt that way, too. But after a while, I said, 'Let me just finish the degree. I'm getting the G.I. Bill.' ~ William Sanderson

In Vancouver, in Sydney and in Orange County, we live among fluorescent stores and streets so brightly lit that you can read a book after dark; in other places across our global body, there are blackouts and curfews every night. ~ Pico Iyer

It had been communicated to me through the odd, secret whispers of women that a female's nose must never shine. In war, in famine, in fire, it had to be matte, and no one got a lipstick without the requisite face powder. … I was taunted by the problem: how could someone write something like the 'Symposium' and make sure her nose did not shine at the same time? It didn't matter to me that I was reading a translation. I'd read Plato's brilliant, dense prose and not be able to tear myself away. Even as a reader my nose shined. It was clearly either/or. You had to concentrate on either one or the other. In a New York minute, the oil from Saudi Arabia could infiltrate your house and end up on your nose. It didn't hurt, it didn't make noise, it didn't incapacitate in any way except for the fact that no girl worth her salt took enough time away from vigilance to read a book let alone write one. ~ Andrea Dworkin

I recently forced myself to read a book on quantum physics, just to try and learn something new. I was confused by the middle of the first sentence and it all went downhill from there. The only thing I can remember learning is that a parallel universe can theoretically be contained on the head of a needle. I don't really know what that means, but I am now more careful handling needles. ~ Stephan Pastis

Read. Read every chance you get. Read to keep growing. Read history. Read poetry. Read for pure enjoyment. Read a book called Life on a Little Known Planet. It's about insects. It will make you feel better. ~ David McCullough

I like reading books with both hands, with my heart pumping, with blood on the page. So I'm interested in people who make stuff, and I'm interested in the lives that make the text. To read a book or watch a movie any other way, to me, personally, feels like a waste of time and misapplication of energy. ~ Tom Bissell

Support Imagination. Read a book. ~ Robbi Sommers Bryant

If you were at school they would not let you read a book like this, they would keep you from reading it by involving you in sport. ~ Helen DeWitt

I've no interest in going on a road trip. If I want to go on holiday, I want to sit on a beach, swim, drink cocktails and read a book. ~ Sam Riley

No one would want to read a book in which I explain the science of cloning because it would be very dull and it would also make no sense. ~ Rachel Cohn

The fans reacted very positively to me being cast [The Mortal Instruments] which, as a Twilight or Harry Potter franchise, when you read a book and you have someone in your mind or you have a vision and then they're cast in real life, it can go either way. So I was very, very honored and happy that they were excited. ~ Lily Collins

I never learned anything at all in school and didn't read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old. ~ Stanley Kubrick