Read For Pleasure Quotes

If parents simply read for pleasure at home on their own, their children were more likely to enjoy reading, too. That pattern held fast across very different countries and different levels of family income. Kids could see what parents valued, and it mattered more than what parents said. ~ Amanda Ripley

I read for pleasure
In search of fictional worlds
To enrich my truths ~ A.A. Patawaran

You know what I can't stand?" Kit said as they passed five carts of books that needed to be reshelved. "I can't stand the words "reading for pleasure." All these parents--most of whom haven't read a single book since high school, unless maybe they picked up THE DA VINCE CODE--drag their kids in here every summer and say, 'Find something to read for pleasure,' which just means that most of the time the message these kids are getting is that reading is not pleasurable. Do you see how that works? It's like reading is a punishment. I hate that. ~ Sue Halpern

I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most. ~ Margaret Atwood

My mother was largely a housewife until she and my father were divorced. No one in the family read for pleasure - it was a very unintellectual household - but my mother did read to us when we were little, and that's how I started to read. ~ Andrea Barrett

Classics aren't books that are read for pleasure. Classics are books that are imposed on unwilling students, books that are subjected to analyses of "levels of significance" and other blatt, books that are dead. ~ Alexei Panshin

The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idleness; who read for pastime but not to kill time; who love books, but do not live by books. ~ Robertson Davies

Why would you apologize for what you read for pleasure? Just think of the illiteracy rate. Every book read for pleasure should be celebrated. And novels that celebrate love, commitment, relationships, making relationships work, why isn't that something to be respected? ~ Nora Roberts

You can't write well what you don't read for pleasure. If it doesn't entertain you, it's not going to entertain anyone else. ~ Nora Roberts

Some academic pursuit had been a suggestion; she found study absorbing, but the tutorial positions open to women were few, and the restrictions of the life did not appeal to her. She read for pleasure. ~ Anne Perry

Don't you ever reread a book you liked?" Once the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them; there were plenty of people who didn't read for pleasure, let alone reread.
But Tom smiled and shook his head. "I used to, when I was a tyke. But how can you read a book you've already read when you know there are all those other ones out there?"
"An excellent argument, Mr. McLaury. I can only defend my position by saying that I use my old books as seasoning for the new ones - I sprinkle them lightly through my reading. ~ Emma Bull

I read books all the time. I'm just half looking for something to do; I mostly just read for pleasure. Occasionally I stumble across something that could be a movie, but I don't put a book down just because I don't see a movie in it, either. ~ Andrew Dominik

It has been proven time and time again in countless studies that students who actively participate in arts education are twice as likely to read for pleasure, have strengthened problem-solving and critical thinking skills, are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, four times more likely to participate in a math and science fair ... ~ Quincy Jones

I don't believe for one moment you can write well what you wouldn't read for pleasure. ~ Nora Roberts

It is impossible to read for pleasure from something to which you are both father and mother, born in such travail that the writer despises the thing that enslaved him. ~ Jim Bishop

My definition of a good book is one that you would read for pleasure despite having no prior interest in the subject. The ostensible subject may be whale hunting, or survival in Auschwitz, or waking up as a cockroach - but you don't read it because you're into fisheries or Nazis or entomology: you read it because your life was poorer before you started it, and because now you can't stop. ~ Philip Gourevitch

Fiction is a sort of inter-human magic, allowing you to travel into a scene and feel it tingle on your skin, see it in your mind's eye and smell it with your mind's nose! But forming these images from the printed page is a skill you have to develop when you're fairly young, I think, or else it's very difficult to read for pleasure later on. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

If you don't read for pleasure, you'll lose your edge as a writer. ~ Nora Roberts

I went into the ministry to use the church to elicit political change according to a soft Marxist vision of wealth distribution and proletarian empowerment. Edrita [his wife] could sense that I was on a long and uncertain path. She was always more conservative than I, but she did share my basic social values and was willing at least to let me test my political follies ... Whenever I read the New Testament after 1950, I was trying to read it entirely without its crucial premises of incarnation and resurrection. That required a lot of circular reasoning for me to establish what the text said. I habitually assumed that truth in religion was finally reducible to economics (with Marx) or psychosexual motives (with Freud) or self assertive power (with Nietzsche). It was truly a self-deceptive time for me, but I had no inkling of its insidious dangers. ~ Thomas C. Oden

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

After all, the media have been and are the major dispenser of the ideals and norms surrounding motherhood: Millions of us have gone to the media for nuts-and-bolts child-rearing advice. Many of us, in fact, preferred media advice to the advice our mothers gave us. We didn't want to be like our mothers and many of us didn't want to raise our kids the way they raised us (although it turns out they did a pretty good job in the end). Thus beginning in the mid-1970s, working mothers became the most important thing you can become in the United States: a market. And they became a market just as niche marketing was exploding--the rise of cable channels, magazines like Working Mother, Family Life, Child, and Twins, all supported by advertisements geared specifically to the new, modern mother. Increased emphasis on child safety, from car seats to bicycle helmets, increased concerns about Johnny not being able to read, the recognition that mothers bought cars, watched the news, and maybe didn't want to tune into one TV show after the next about male detectives with a cockatoo or some other dumbass mascot saving hapless women--all contributed to new shows, ad campaigns, magazines, and TV news stories geared to mothers, especially affluent, upscale ones. Because of this sheer increase in output and target marketing, mothers were bombarded as never before by media constructions of the good mother. The good mother bought all this stuff to stimulate, protect, educate, and indulge her kids. S ~ Susan J. Douglas

No plaque reminds the passer-by of these glories, although there should be one; for those who invent biscuits bring great pleasure to many. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

In one memorable episode, Warren received a trusting note from a woman in the bookkeeping department via the library's pneumatic-tube system, which ran between the library and store. "It's very slow here on this rainy day," the bookkeeper complained. "Please send me one of those novels you have had to withdraw from circulation as unfit for a lady to read." Warren fulfilled the request and was surprised the next day to receive the book back, discreetly wrapped, with the message: "Blessings upon you! You're quite right. This is not fit for anybody to read. Please send another just like it. ~ Molly Guptill Manning

Students read for tests and because their parents ask them to, but I think it's very important to tell children that you can read for fun, too, and to understand human spirit. It builds empathy. ~ Adora Svitak

I was rescued by librarians. It was librarians who said 'maybe you would like to read The Hardy Boys as well as Nancy Drew.' It is true for me, as for so many countless others, that librarians saved my life, my internal life. ~ Gloria Steinem

I have no interest in the printed word. I would continue to write if there were no writing and no print. I put my words down for a matter of memory. They are more made to be spoken than to be read. ~ John Steinbeck

Lifelong pain, an unwanted pregnancy, and even death may be the reward for such a brief window of pleasure. What a foolish gamble! ~ James C. Dobson

Why should a Christian be called upon always to deny himself, his own feeling, and will, and pleasure? Why must he part with his life - that life to maintain which a man is prepared to make any sacrifice? Why should a man hate and lose his life? The answer is very simple. It is because that life is so completely under the power of sin and death that it has to be utterly denied and sacrificed. The self-life must be wholly taken away to make room for the life of God. He that would have the full, the overflowing life of God, must utterly deny and lose his own life. ~ Andrew Murray

My position is such that there is no necessity for me to enter into competition with struggling humanity. As to expensive and ruinous pleasures, I am a sceptic who knows how much they are worth, or rather, knows that they are not worth anything. ~ Henryk Sienkiewicz

I swear to you, Zane. I thought what I was doing was right. I searched for you after I left New York. You were out of my reach. When Burns read me in, the only thing I could think of was that it was the only way of getting back to you. Being partnered with you full-time, being able ... being able to see you every day, to have you in my life. When he said you might need protecting, it was the only thing I heard. I swear to you. All I wanted from the day I left you in that hospital was you. To be back there with you. ~ Abigail Roux

Readers may be divided into four classes:
1) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied.
2) Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time.
3) Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.
4) Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

We rejoice in the joys of our friends as much as we do our own, and we are equally grieved at their sorrows. Wherefore the wise people will feel toward their friends as they do toward themselves, and whatever labor they would encounter with a view to their own pleasure, they will encounter also for the sake of their friends. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

When I give up the helm I know that the time has come for thee to take it. What there is to do will be instantly done. Vain is this struggle.
Then take away your hands and silently put up with your defeat, my heart, and think it your good fortune to sit perfectly still where you are placed.
These my lamps are blown out at every little puff of wind, and trying to light them I forget all else again and again.
But I shall be wise this time and wait in the dark, spreading my mat on the floor; and whenever it is thy pleasure, my lord, come silently and take thy seat here. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

He does not care for me. He brought me to the village to feed his child."
"He gave you Red Star."
Jesse denied its significance. "That was only so that I would not shame him."
"He brought many skins for a new tepee. He brought you elk skins for a new dress."
Jesse explained. "We needed those things because of the fire.All of the people needed new tepees, new clothing."
"He sits with you every evening outside the tepee."
"That is so I can read from the Book."
Prairie Flower grew impatient. "Walks the Fire! I tell you truth.Rides the Wind wishes you to be his wife.You know nothing of Lakota ways.I will tell you!"
Jesse started to protest, but Prairie Flower interrupted. "No! You listen! When a man wishes to show he wants a woman, he dresses in his finest clothing and comes to her outside her tepee.They sit and talk.He gives gifts to her parents. Not every custom is followed, because you are not a young Lakota woman. But I tell you, Rides the Wind cares for you.
After the fire, when Medicine Hawk came-when you were as one dying-you did not see him. I saw him. Rides the Wind did not eat. He did not sleep.He thought only of Walks the Fire.He hunted healing herbs.He hunted the elk for your dress.He took Two Mothers to Yellow Bird's tepee so that his cries would not disturb your rest.He trusted no one but Old One, and himself, and me to care for you. ~ Stephanie Grace Whitson

The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day. ~ Mark Twain

In a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of solitude. E-reading opens the door to distraction. It invites connectivity and clicking and purchasing. The closed network of a printed book, on the other hand, seems to offer greater serenity. It harks back to a pre-jacked-in age. Cloth, paper, ink: For these read helmet, cuirass, shield. They afford a degree of protection and make possible a less intermediated, less fractured experience. They guard our aloneness. That is why I love them, and why I read printed books still. ~ Mohsin Hamid

I can't help it. I'm thinking about sex. Sex with Will Haley. Sex in general. The thing is, I can't make my brain turn the idea into something sexy. Isn't that ridiculous? It's sex. It's inherently sexy. But not to me. Because in hazily lit movies, when the girl pulls her shirt up over her head, she stops being me. The hazily lit girl is never me. She has a flat golden stomach and cute little boobs, and you can see the boy falling for her. You can read it on his face. Under my shirt, there's no flat stomach, and there are no cute little boobs, and there's no hazy lighting. It's just a lot of me. Way too much of me. ~ Becky Albertalli

Realize that people are hypocrites. The sooner you accept this fact the better. I NEVER sensor my stories. I NEVER sacrifice historical accuracy for sake of political correctness. And I apologize for nothing because I've noticed a sense of hypocrisy in regard to writing. People will buy a Stephen King book and read 900 pages of gruesome murder, graphic sex, and sometimes even kid fu**ing. And they will praise his artistic genius and buy his next filthy book. Then the same people will want to sensor every line I put on the page. To hell with that. I'm an artist too. ~ Catalina DuBois

For quite a while, Francie had been spelling out letters, sounding them and then putting the sounds together to mean a word. But one day, she looked at a page and the word "mouse" had instantaneous meaning. She looked at the word, and the picture of a gray mouse scampered through her mind. She looked further and when she saw "horse," she heard him pawing the ground and saw the sun glint on his glossy coat. The word "running" hit her suddenly and she breathed hard as though running herself. The barrier between the individual sound of each letter and the whole meaning of the word was removed and the printed word meant a thing at one quick glance. She read a few pages rapidly and almost became ill with excitement. She wanted to shout it out. She could read! She could read! ~ Betty Smith

In my writing class, we never, ever talk about the writing - ever. We never address a story that's been read. I also won't let anyone look at the person who's reading. No eye contact; everybody has to draw a spiral. And I would like to do a drawing class where we could talk about anything except for the drawing. No one could even mention it. ~ Lynda Barry

I'd love to do an action film. I'd love to do a film based on a book series; I love to read the book and then go see the movie. I'd love to have a show on Disney; I love working for them. And I'm also working on getting some new music out of my own. ~ Katherine McNamara

As soon as I start to write I'm very aware, I'm trying to be aware that a reader just might well pick up this poem, a stranger. So when I'm writing - and I think that this is important for all writers - I'm trying to be a writer and a reader back and forth. I write two lines or three lines. I will immediately stop and turn into a reader instead of a writer, and I'll read those lines as if I had never seen them before and as if I had never written them. ~ Billy Collins

People used to think that learning to read evidenced human progress; they still celebrate the decline of illiteracy as a great victory; they condemn countries with a large proportion of illiterates; they think that reading is a road to freedom. All this is debatable, for the important thing is not to be able to read, but to understand what one reads, to reflect on and judge what one reads. Outside of that, reading has no meaning (and even destroys certain automatic qualities of memory and observation). But to talk about critical faculties and discernment is to talk about something far above primary education and to consider a very small minority. The vast majority of people, perhaps 90 percent, know how to read, but do not exercise their intelligence beyond this. They attribute authority and eminent value to the printed word, or, conversely, reject it altogether. As these people do not possess enough knowledge to reflect and discern, they believe - or disbelieve - in toto what they read. And as such people, moreover, will select the easiest, not the hardest, reading matter, they are precisely on the level at which the printed word can seize and convince them without opposition. They are perfectly adapted to propaganda. ~ Jacques Ellul

But as I pursued that dream of upward mobility preparing for college, things just didn't fit together. As I read Scriptures about how the last will be first, I started wondering why I was working so hard to be first. ~ Shane Claiborne

A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough ... People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself. ~ Doris Lessing

After that, Kestrel sought him out. She used the excuse of those lessons he had given her. She said that she wanted more. She acquired a number of menial skills, like how to blacken boots.
Arin was easy to find. Although raids on the countryside continued, he increasingly relied on lieutenants to lead the sorties. He spent more time at home.
"I don't know what he thinks he's doing," Sarsine said.
"He's giving officers under his command the chance to prove their worth," Kestrel said. "He's showing his trust in them and letting them build their confidence. It's sound military strategy."
Sarsine gave her a hard look.
"He's delegating," Kestrel said.
"He's shirking. And for what, I'm sure you know."
This struck a bright match of pleasure within Kestrel. ~ Marie Rutkoski

When I think of all the books still left for me to read, I am certain of further happiness. ~ Jules Renard

At the same time, eroticism in the home requires active engagement and willful intent. It is an ongoing resistance to the message that marriage is serious, more work than play; and that passion is for teenagers and the immature. We must unpack our ambivalence about pleasure, and challenge our pervasive discomfort with sexuality, particularly in the context of family. Complaining of sexual boredom is easy and conventional. Nurturing eroticism in the home is an act of open defience. ~ Esther Perel

And, hey. You. Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That's a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn't read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that's as creepy as hell. Thank you for seeking out stories, the kind that take place in your brain. ~ Max Barry

I've read about myself and my husband and my family, to the point where they've called my parents, they've called my brothers, offering money to tell stories. They call friends of mine. I'd just like for them to just ... don't badger us. Don't scrutinize us. We have children and they have to live, too. It's not fair. ~ Whitney Houston

This was her body. She had learned to take pleasure in it, even if no man had ever done the same. It was curved and generous and womanly and strong, and it was formed to do more than decorate a drawing room, or transfer wealth from one gentleman to another.
She was made to tempt, labor, inspire, create, sustain.
Despite the way Rafe held her bound in his grasp, a sense of power moved through her. For once, she could revel in her femininity and feel it as something other than a disadvantage to be overcome. A quality to be respected, worshiped. Even feared. ~ Tessa Dare

When we neglect our Bible study we often feel guilty. When you skip a meal do you feel guilty? No, you feel hungry. The Bible is food for our soul. When we fail to read it we should not feel guilty, we should feel hungry. Guilt is fueled by obligation hunger is fueled by desire. ~ Tyler Edwards

All the games were selected for them by supervisors and had to have some useful, educational purpose. The children learned these new games but unlearned something else in the process: they forgot to be happy, how to take pleasure in little things and last, but not least, how to dream ~ Michael Ende

Having learned to write news, I now distrust newspapers as a source of information, and I am often surprised by historians who take them as primary source for knowing what really happened. I think newspapers should be read for information about how contemporaries construed events, rather than for reliable knowledge of events themselves. ~ Robert Darnton

A: Is this the copy that you read as a kid?
E: Yes. Look at the edges--that turquoise color. It's lighter along the top, from where the sun hit it. Now look at this gorgeous color here, the long edge. Beautiful. Makes me nostalgic.
A: For what?
E: I don't know. The age of turquoise page edges. Somewhere there's a grad student doing her dissertation on the inks used in twentieth-century mass-market paperbacks. ~ Ed Park

You were in business making meth? Do you have any idea what that drug does to people?"

We weren't givin' it away," Concise snaps. "If someone was fool enough to mess himself up, that was his problem."

I shake my head, disgusted. "If you build it, they will come."

If you build it," Concise says, "you cover your rent. If you build it, you pay off the loan sharks. If you build it, you put shoes on your kid's feet and food in his belly and maybe even show up every now and then with a toy that every other goddamn kid in the school already has." He looks up at me. "If you build it, maybe your son don't have to, when he grow up."

It is amazing -- the secrets you can keep, even when you are living in close quarters. "You didn't tell me."

Concise gets up and braces his hands against the upper bunk. "His mama OD'd. He lives with her sister, who can't always be bothered to take care of him. I try to send money so that I know he's eatin' breakfast and gettin' school lunch tickets. I got a little bank account for him, too. Jus' in case he don't want to be part of a street gang, you know? Jus' in case he want to be an astronaut or a football player or somethin'." He digs out a small notebook from his bunk. "I'm writin' him. A diary, like. So he know who his daddy is, by the time he learn to read."

It is always easier to judge someone than to figure out what might have pushed him to the point where he might do something ille ~ Jodi Picoult

The new mathematics is a sort of supplement to language, affording a means of thought about form and quantity and a means of expression,more exact,compact, and ready than ordinary language. The great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential facts of financial science, and endless social and political problems are only accessible and thinkable to those who have had a sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex world wide states that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write. ~ H.G.Wells

[People] ask themselves, what is suitable for my position? What is usually done by persons of my station and percuniary circumstances? Or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose what is customary in preference to what suits their own inclinations. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things that are commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. ~ John Stuart Mill

Tavish could tell he was being sized up. And by the narrowing of Joseph's eyes, he recognized Tavish's intent as well. They stood, eyeing one another for several long and silent moments. Tavish had not intended to pursue Katie in the least. Now, it seemed, he had a rival. Joseph Archer was infuriatingly difficult to read. Was it confidence that kept him so at ease? Joseph did have the advantage. Katie lived in his house. He could see her, talk to her every day. Joseph was wealthy, with the air of class and money about him. Tavish had none of those things. And though Katie had warmed to him a bit, he didn't yet feel she'd entirely shed her wariness of him. ~ Sarah M. Eden

God ... made childhood joyous, full of life, bubbling over with laughter, playful, bright and sunny. We should put into their childhood days just as much sunshine and gladness, just as much cheerful pleasure as possible. Pour in the sunshine about them in youth. Let them be happy, encourage all innocent joy, provide pleasant games for them, romp and play with them; be a child again among them. Then God's blessing will come upon your home, and your children will grow up sunny-hearted, gentle, affectionate, joyous themselves and joy-bearers to the world. ~ J.R. Miller

For me, the pleasure of writing comes with inventing stories. ~ Roald Dahl

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read 'The Lost Symbol', by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it. ~ The Economist