The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours. Alan Bennett, The History Boys: The Film, 2006
The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic. Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
My alma mater was books, a good library ... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity. Malcolm X
The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them. Arnold Lobel
It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that when I’m in the company of others – even my nearest and dearest – there always comes a moment when I’d rather be reading a book. Maureen Corrigan, Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books
I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone. Mark Twain
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel ... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become. Ursula K le Guin
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life. W Somerset Maugham, Books and You
Why can’t people just sit and read books and be nice to each other? David Baldacci, The Camel Club
Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day. Voltaire
Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste. Voltaire, Candide
I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage. Roald Dahl
By now, it is probably very late at night, and you have stayed up to read this book when you should have gone to sleep. If this is the case, then I commend you for falling into my trap. It is a writer’s greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of his books. It goes back to authors being terrible people who delight in the suffering of others. Plus, we get a kickback from the caffeine industry. Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians
One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time. Carl Sagan
My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence. Edith Sitwell
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all. Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I’d rather boast about the ones I’ve read. Jorge Luis Borges
Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism. Jorge Luis Borges, Seven Nights
He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head. John Green, An Abundance of Katherines
From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived. Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, ‘Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.’ Virginia Woolf
I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time. Virginia Woolf
I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most. Margaret Atwood
Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you’re working. Tell them it’s research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone. Jennifer Weiner
I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia. Woody Allen
Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world. Napoleon Bonaparte
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief. Franz Kafka
The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries. Rene Descartes
One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures. George W Bush
The best books ... are those that tell you what you know already. George Orwell, 1984
My life is a reading list. John Irving: A Prayer for Owen Meany
I have good reason to be content, for thank God I can read and perhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths. John Keats, letter to John Taylor 27th February 1818
Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author’s words reverberating in your head. Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies
If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs. Anne Fadiman
Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travellers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education. Through characters – the saints and the sinners, real or imagined – reading shows you how to be a better human being. Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Ready in Every Child
Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss. Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman