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I was in Nashville, Tennessee, last year. After the show I went to a Waffle House. I’m not proud of it. I was hungry. And I’m alone, I’m eating and I’m reading a book, right? Waitress walks over to me: ‘Hey, whatcha readin’ for?’ Isn’t that the weirdest fuckin’ question you’ve ever heard? Not what am I reading, but what am I reading FOR? Well, goddamnit, ya stumped me! Why do I read? Well ... hmmm ... I dunno ... I guess I read for a lot of reasons and the main one is so I don’t end up being a fuckin’ waffle waitress. Bill Hicks, Sane Man
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. Albert Einstein, interview Viereck, 1929
Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. Albert Einstein
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. John Locke
I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life. Warren Buffet
There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by readin’. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves. Will Rogers
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711
Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. George Macaulay Trevelyan
No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. Atwood H Townsend, attributions & variations
Never force yourself to read a book that you do not enjoy. There are so many good books in the world that it is foolish to waste time on one that does not give you pleasure. Atwood H Townsend, Good Reading
Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don’t believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it. John Steinbeck
Who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgement equal or superior
(And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself. John Milton, Paradise Regained 4:322
Read. Do not brood. Immerse yourself in long study: only the habit of persistent work can make one continually content; it produces an opium that numbs the soul. Gustave Flaubert, 1821-80
You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright ... Haven’t you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you’ve had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings? ibid.
The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy. Gustave Flaubert
For those who have tasted the profound activity of writing, reading is no more than a secondary pleasure. Stendhal aka Henri Beyle, De l’Amour
I’ll read enough
When I do see the very book indeed
Where all my sins are writ, and that’s myself. William Shakespeare, Richard II IV i 263-265, Richard to Northumberland
Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, II ii 192-193
I wish thee as much pleasure in the reading, as I had in the writing. Francis Quaries, Emblems, 1635
We read to know that we are not alone. William Nicholson
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. Groucho Marx
From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it. Groucho Marx
Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too hard to read. Groucho Marx
It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. Oscar Wilde
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though. J D Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! – When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
A fondness for reading, properly directed, must be an education in itself. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. Stephen King
You get a little moody sometimes but I think that’s because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up. Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides
Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry. Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
Read, read, read. Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. William Faulkner
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive. James Baldwin
Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. Logan Pearsall Smith