Worth Reading Quotes

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

With lines that show an unyielding dedication to craft, these poems are not afraid of meaning or the meaningful. More and more every day, the thinking American asks how she is to believe in love when there is war all about her, and in each of her deeply felt lyrics, Elyse Fenton confronts this question with the kind of tenderness one lover reserves for another. If every poem is indeed a love poem,Clamor is indeed a debut worth reading and about which we must make noise. ~ Jericho Brown

None of [the books are] worth reading. There are no fairy tales, no faerie tails, no sword-swinging princesses or lightning-throwing gods. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Books are people,' smiled Miss Marks. 'In every book worth reading, the author is there to meet you, to establish contact with you. He takes you into his confidence and reveals his thoughts to you. ~ D.E. Stevenson

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

The infant New York Times boasted that no newspaper printing what was really worth reading ever perished for lack of readers. ~ Harold Holzer

Great speed in reading is a dubious achievement; it is of value only if what you have to read is not worth reading. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

One of hallmarks of a creative person is the ability to tolerate ambiguity, dissonance, inconsistency, things out of place. But one of the rules of a well-run corporation is that surprise is to be minimized. Yet if this rule were applied to the creative process, nothing worth reading would get written, nothing worth seeing would get painted, nothing worth living with and using would ever get designed. ~ Ralph Caplan

Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. ~ George Macaulay Trevelyan

Let the enemy fall by their swords. Words not worth reading die their own death. But our Words will be Told! ~ K.A. Gunn

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz ~ William L.K.

The truth is ... that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense - has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman. ~ H.L. Mencken

The publishing industry, unsurprisingly, is full of different people who love different things and express that love in different languages. Find the people, the editors and agents, with whom you share some language, and some sense of what makes literature worth reading. ~ Leslie Jamison

I don't read anything anymore. I don't have the eyesight. I read my own copy, that's all. I think I've read everything that's worth reading. ~ John Gould

I like to think I've written something worth reading when I cry the tears of the characters. ~ Carla H. Krueger

It's doubtful that any fiction worth reading has been produced on a computer running Windows Vista. ~ Lynn Coady

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are gone, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing. ~ Carson McCullers

Into the paradise of euphony, the good poet must introduce hell. Broken paradises are the only kind worth reading. ~ Mark Doty

Read a lot. Expect something big, something exalting or deepening from a book. No book is worth reading that isn't worth re-reading. ~ Susan Sontag

Acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading. ~ William Blake

Both Tom and I adore detective stories. Isn't that so, Tom?" [Lady Brace]
"Right!" agreed her husband ... "But they've got to be proper detective stories. They've got to present a tricky, highly sophisticated problem, which you're given fair opportunity to solve."
"And," amplified Virginia, "no saying they're psychological studies when the author can't write for beans."
"Correct!" her husband agreed again. "Couldn't care less when you're supposed to get all excited as to whether the innocent man will be hanged or the innocent heroine will be seduced. Heroine ought to be seduced; what's she there for? The thing is the mystery. It's not worth reading if the mystery is simple or easy or no mystery at all. ~ Carter Dickson

History is worth reading when it tells us truly what the attitude toward life was in the past. ~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher

The book is worth reading, in part because it is enjoyable to read of
other people's folly, not to mention their avarice and stupidity."
Roger Lowenstein, reviewing "Devil Take the Hindmost: a History
of Financial Speculation", WSJ 6-1-99 ~ Roger Lowenstein

Carrie felt this as a personal reproof. She read "Dora Thorne," or had a great deal in the past. It seemed only fair to her, but she supposed that people thought it very fine. Now this clear- eyed, fine-headed youth, who looked something like a student to her, made fun of it. It was poor to him, not worth reading. She looked down, and for the first time felt the pain of not understanding. ~ Theodore Dreiser

It is my opinion that a story worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then. ~ C.S. Lewis

If a book is worth reading, it will most probably be worth reading twice. ~ Aman Jassal

A human being is like a novel: until the last page you don't know how it will end. Or it wouldn't be worth reading. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

I got interested in the idea that love is often used as a kind of blanket explanation for things. I mean, battered wives, for instance: "Why did you go back to him?" "Oh, I loved him." "Why did you embezzle fifteen million pounds and run away to the other side of the world?" "Oh, well, because I was in love." All that and then you don't ask anything else. I thought if I just say, these people needed love and they found it, then it kind of explained it away. I wanted to look at their behaviour and how love can inspire the best and the very worst in human behaviour but love itself is not behaviour. So I avoided the word 'love' until the very end and it's the last word in the novel. I wanted to explore what people will do when they're in such terrible need of love. If there was a big idea then that was it. Then, of course, I hope that if it's a story worth reading it's the characters themselves who make you want to read it, not the big idea. I don't think a big idea drives a novel usually. Something else has to engage you on a much more kind of personal level. ~ Morag Joss

If you want to be remembered when you are dust, do something worth writing about or write a book worth reading. ~ Susan Jagannath

Every book is worth reading. If it cannot make you wiser it will make you a critic ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

The novels that get praised in the NY Review of Books aren't worth reading. Ninety-seven percent of science fiction is adolescent rubbish, but good science fiction is the best and only literature of our times. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

Write something worth reading and your voice will be heard. ~ Teresa Mummert

If the warmth of her Language could affect the body it might
be worth reading in this weather. ~ Jane Austen

Don't write for money. Write because you love to do something. If you write for money, you won't write anything worth reading. ~ Ray Bradbury

Write about fear. Write about pain. Write about heartache and resentment. Nothing worth reading comes from writing what can be said out loud. ~ Alexandra Cruz

No book worth reading ever fails to be steeped with the spirit of the person who wrote it. ~ Paul Leicester Ford

No fair maiden should die alone" he said, putting a hand on hers. "Shall I read to you in your final moments? What story would you like?"
She snatched her hand back. 'How about the story of the idiotic prince who won't leave the assassin alone?"
"Oh! I love that story! It has such a happy ending too- why, the assassin was really feigning her illness in order to get the prince's attention! Who would have guessed it? Such a clever girl. And the bedroom scene is so lovely- it's worth reading through all of their ceaseless banter! ~ Sarah J. Maas

How truly does this journal contain my real and undisguised thoughts
I always write it according to the humour I am in, and if astranger was to think it worth reading, how capricious
insolent & whimsical I must appear!
one moment flighty and half mad,
the next sad and melancholy. No matter! Its truth and simplicity are its sole recommendations. ~ Fanny Burney

Writing is a solitary pursuit and I think you have to be partially at peace with yourself, but it's the other part that's usually producing the stuff worth reading. ~ Craig Johnson

I want to go somewhere good when I read, not into someone else's crappy life." "Good lives aren't worth reading about," he argues. "I read about the struggle. Other people's growing pains." "I like happy endings," I say. "Real life never has a happy ending." "God, you're depressing. I don't know why we're friends. ~ Tarryn Fisher

If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. ~ John Ruskin

A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't even be worth reading. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray. ~ Rumi

Read something worth writing about or write something worth reading about ~ Anonymous

A lot of writers dwell on their relationships with their mothers, but only a few are worth reading. ~ Kathryn Harrison

I think sports makes for good drama because it has all the same ingredients as anything worth reading or listening to or watching. Conflict, desire, heartbreak - it's all there. ~ Jay Baruchel

A good book gets better at the second reading. A great book at the third. Any book not worth rereading isn't worth reading. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading. ~ H.L. Mencken

Among those today who believe that modern poetry must do without rhyme or metre, there is an assumption that the alternative to free verse is a crash course in villanelles, sestinas and other such fixed forms. But most ... are rare in English poetry. Few poets have written a villanelle worth reading, or indeed regret not having done so. ~ James Fenton

In my high-minded and naive way, I believed the only books worth reading were the classics. ~ Maria Semple

In adolescence students are suddenly turned loose on books worth reading, but generally don't know how to read them. ~ Martin Buber

I never know what I am writing. The moment you know what you're writing, you're writing nothing worth reading. ~ Richard Flanagan

Any book worth banning is a book worth reading. ~ Isaac Asimov

In an article on Bunyan lately published in the "Contemporary Review" - the only article on the subject worth reading on the subject I ever saw (yes, thank you, I am familiar with Macaulay's patronizing prattle about "The Pilgrim's Progress") etc. ~ George Bernard Shaw

A wise man once said that if a book was not worth reading twice it was not worth reading once. ~ Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson

People have pointed out evidences of personal feeling in my notices as if they were accusing me of a misdemeanor, not knowing that criticism written without personal feeling is not worth reading. It is the capacity for making good or bad art a personal matter that makes a man a critic. ~ George Bernard Shaw

The artistic bend is a sell-out. It's all truth, or it's no good. EIther write what's in the heart, all of it, the good, the bad, the ugly, the uglier, the privat and even more private and it's a book worth reading. Not willing to go there? Do yourself and the world a favor: Don't write it until you're ready to do so. Only then is it your truest artist being heard. And only then will the world want to hear what you have to say."

-Wendy K. Williamson 9/25/14 ~ Wendy K. Williamson

Everyone's life is an autobiography...make yours worth reading ~ Origin Unknown But Modified By Sam Thiara

Our amended Constitution is the lodestar for our aspirations. Like every text worth reading, it is not crystalline. The phrasing is broad and the limitations of its provisions are not clearly marked. Its majestic generalities and ennobling pronouncements are both luminous and obscure. This ambiguity of course calls forth interpretation, the interaction of reader and text. The encounter with the Constitutional text has been, in many senses, my life's work. ~ William J. Brennan

I found this book simple but very deep, some chapters on the heavy side but well worth reading for the new comers and also for the veteran in the field of meditation ~ Muktananda

Without a mission and a sense of whom you write for, you aren't worth reading. ~ Steve Lopez

He looked at his foreword, written, as ever, in his customary green ink, with the simple, if guilty, hope that in the abyss that lay between his dream and his failure there might be something worth reading in which the truth could be felt. ~ Richard Flanagan

Remember that people are only guests in your story - the same way you are only a guest in theirs - so make the chapters worth reading. ~ Lauren Klarfeld

When I became poet laureate, I was in a slightly uncomfortable position because I think a lot of poetry isn't worth reading. ~ Billy Collins

If a book isn't self-explanatory, then it isn't worth reading. ~ Paulo Coelho

Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. ~ Antonin Artaud

I'm being forced to challenge ideas that have kept me safe for so long. There's an entire library of information in my head, and suddenly I can't decide if any of it is worth reading. ~ Louise Gornall

Do you know what you are?
You are a manuscript oƒ a divine letter.
You are a mirror reflecting a noble face.
This universe is not outside of you.
Look inside yourself;
everything that you want,
you are already that. ~ Rumi

I was always taught that book keeping was more relevant than book reading. The only thing worth reading was meant to be a balance sheet. ~ Ashwin Sanghi

Essayists, like poets, are born and not made, and for one worth remembering, the world is confronted with a hundred not worth reading. Your true essayist is, in a literary sense, the friend of everybody. ~ William Ernest Henley

When I was with him, I felt like a book worth reading all the way through again and again and again. Sure, he liked my cover. I wanted him to, but I wanted him to like everything else too. I imagined him buying the book, studying it, quoting it, memorizing his favorite parts. He'd keep it with him always, like a Bible, hold it sacred even when the cover fell off and the book became bent with age and use. Maybe, he'd be buried with it. That's all I wanted. ~ Candice Raquel Lee

I always give my students exercises where they really have to open a vein and bleed all over the paper and that's the way you get the important characters. Sooner or later every writer worth reading writes a story his mother wouldn't read and having to get that stuff out is part of one's growth as a writer. ~ George R R Martin

Books worth reading are worth re-reading. ~ Holbrook Jackson

If I'm passionate about it, if I can work with it and make it into an adventure worth reading- I will write it. ~ M.A. Levi

The reason Saul Bellow doesn't talk to me anymore is because he knows his new novels are not worth reading. ~ Leslie Fiedler

Don't leave your life a blank page. Make each word count and leave behind something worth reading. ~ Mae East

If you like eating meat but want to eat ethically, this is the book for you. From the hard-headed, clear-eyed, and sympathetic perspective of butchers who care deeply about the animals whose parts they sell, the customers who buy their meats, and the pleasures of eating, this book has much to teach. It's an instant classic, making it clear why meat is part of the food revolution. I see it as the new Bible of meat aficionados and worth reading by all food lovers, meat-eating and not. ~ Marion Nestle

Mrs. Fisher, her hands folded on her lap, was doing nothing, merely gazing fixedly into the fire. The lamp was arranged conveniently for reading, but she was not reading. Her great dead friends did not seem worth reading that night. They always said the same things now - over and over again they said the same things, and nothing new was to be got out of them any more for ever. No doubt they were greater than any one was now, but they had this immense disadvantage, that they were dead. Nothing further was to be expected of them; while of the living, what might one not still expect? She craved for the living, the developing - the crystallized and finished wearied her. She was thinking that if only she had had a son - a son like Mr. Briggs, a dear ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

If you want your name to be remembered after your death either do something worth writing or write some thing worth reading ~ Abraham Lincoln

There is always a hope for the living.
Life is worth living, no matter what situation you may have encounter.
No situations is permanent. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I entered a poem in a poetry contest around 1987, and the poem won and I received $1,000 for it. That made me realize that maybe what I was writing was worth reading to people. After that, for some reason, I turned to novels and I've written mainly novels ever since. ~ Sharon Creech

Not every book has to be loaded with symbolism, irony, or musical language, but it seems to me that every book-at least every one worth reading-is about something. ~ Stephen King

Why is it that when you wipe up dust its called dusting but when you wipe up a spill its not called spilling? Just something to think about. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

Whether my columns are worth reading isn't for me to say. ~ John Podhoretz

The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the folk-lore of Central China, or a statistical enquiry into the declining population of Prince Edward Island. But to write something out of one's own mind, worth reading for its own sake, is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments, few and far in between. Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica. ~ Stephen Leacock

You will find most books worth reading are worth reading twice. ~ John Lothrop Motley

A writer flirts with schizophrenia, nurtures synesthesia, and embraces obsessive-compulsive disorder. Your art feeds on you, your soul, and, yes, to a degree, your sanity. Writing novels worth reading will bugger up your mind, jeopardize your relationships, and distend your life. You have been warned. ~ David Mitchell

What are books but tangible dreams? What is reading if it is not dreaming? The best books cause us to dream; the rest are not worth reading. ~ Rikki Ducornet

The people are supposed to read books in these times of the School Board and, therefore, they do not need living speech. We are glad that the people should read, but much of what they read which is best worth reading was first heard from the pulpit! We know of no rivalry between the printed word and the preached Word - it is often the same thing. But I reckon that the most of you who have been converted to God will say that it was not what you read, but what you heard which was used of the Holy Spirit for your conversion! When heart speaks to heart with accents of emotion, it is somehow different from the paper. Some Brothers read their sermons and I do not condemn them, but I know that most of the people feel a kind of chill creeping over them as they hear the leaves rustle. It may be a prejudice, but I know that nine out of 10 are numbed by the foolscap for the reading. ~ Anonymous

Most of the literary classics are worth reading, if you've nothing better to do. ~ Edward Abbey

Is impossible to specify what [consciousness] is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it. ~ Stuart Sutherland

I'm the only one who can accurately tell my story. It's up to me to make it worth reading. ~ Keisha Elle

Any heroine worth reading about will one day find herself on the moors of a devastating personal crisis. For the most part, we must traverse them alone.
Chapter 10 Steadfastness Jane Eyre ~ Erin Blakemore

I began to think that the finest modern writer was the screen actor. This was in the spirit of the Fifties where a very antiliterary literature was emerging - Kenneth Patchen and others. I kind of believed what Nietzsche said, that nothing not written in your blood is worth reading; it's just more pollution of the airwaves. ~ Jack Nicholson

Ultimately, the first, best step in getting your work noticed is to write good work. If people don't engage in your writing, no amount of serialization or free downloads is going to matter. You have to write something worth reading, and often it takes time to get at that level. ~ John Scalzi

As he reached for his Visa card, the security monitor next to the register caught Billy in all his glory: football burly but slump-shouldered, his pale face with its exhaustion-starred eyes topped with half a pitchfork's worth of prematurely graying hair. He was only forty-two, but that crushed-cellophane gaze of his combined with a world-class insomniac's posture had once gotten him into a movie at a senior citizen's discount. ~ Richard Price

No group is worth joining if everybody is welcome. ~ Jim Grimsley

You didn't hear the angels singing. It was brought down to Mother Earth, which is where it should be. And that led me to a lot of other reading. ~ Harvey Keitel

If it's something you can't say in front of your parents then it's probably worth saying. ~ Max Redford

I exist to magnify Jesus Christ. That is, I am on this planet for one ultimate reason: to do whatever I can to make Jesus Christ known and treasured - a knowing and a treasuring that accords with his infinite beauty and immeasurable worth. ~ John Piper