You should never read just for ‘enjoyment’. Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends’ insane behaviour, or better yet, your own. Pick ‘hard books’. Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god’s sake, don’t let me ever hear you say, ‘I can’t read fiction. I only have time for the truth.’ Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of ‘literature’? That means fiction, too, stupid. John Waters, Role Model
Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words. Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Deprived of their newspapers or a novel, reading-addicts will fall back onto cookery books, on the literature which is wrapped around bottles of patent medicine, on those instructions for keeping the contents crisp which are printed on the outside of boxes of breakfast cereals. On anything. Aldous Huxley, The Olive Tree
I read the fuck out of every book I can get my hands on. Nick Hornby
I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don’t read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways ... It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being. John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Francis Bacon, Essays: ‘Of Studies’, 1625
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. ibid.
I read my eyes out and can’t read half enough ... the more one reads the more one sees we have to read. John Adams
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 reads just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it. The Economist
Few pleasures, for the true reader, rival the pleasure of browsing unhurriedly among books: old books, new books, library books, other people’s books, one’s own books – it does not matter whose or where. Simply to be among books, glancing at one here, reading a page from one over there, enjoying them all as objects to be touched, looked at, even smelt, is a deep satisfaction. And often, very often, while browsing haphazardly, looking for nothing in particular, you pick up a volume that suddenly excites you, and you know that this one of all the others you must read. Those are great moments – and the books we come across like that are often the most memorable. Aidan Chambers
This is the most important thing about me – I’m a card-carrying reader. All I really want to do is sit and read or lie down and read or eat and read or shit and read. I’m a trained reader. I want a job where I get paid for reading books. And I don’t have to make reports on what I read or to apply what I read. Maxine Hong Kinston, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have laboured hard for. Socrates
I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised. Wislawa Szymborska
Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today. Holbrook Jackson
We don’t read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we’re living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something. Orson Scott Card
A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; – not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. Henry David Thoreau, Walden
I think that every reader on earth has a list of cherished books as unique as their fingerprints ... I think that, as you age, you tend to gravitate towards the classics, but those aren’t the books that give you the same sort of hope for the world that a cherished book does. Douglas Coupland
Sit in a room and read – and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time. Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
I love the smell of book ink in the morning. Umberto Eco
Reading is not an end to itself, but a means to an end. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
Poetry is not the most important thing in life ... I’d much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets. Dylan Thomas
Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammelled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes. Arthur Schopenheauer, Essay and Aphorism
The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. Pat Conroy
You don’t read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil. Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran
It is nice that nobody writes as they talk and that the printed language is different from the spoken otherwise you could not lose yourself in books and of course you do, you completely do. Gertrude Stein
The Babar the Elephant book is sitting in front of me. I pick it up and start reading it. I remember reading it as a small Boy and enjoying it and imagining that I was friends with Babar, his constant Companion during all of his adventures. He went to the moon, I went with him. He fought Tomb Raiders in Egypt, I fought alongside him. He rescued his elephant girlfriend from Ivory Hunters on the Savanna, I coordinated the getaway. I loved that goddamn Elephant and I loved being his friend. In a childhood full of unhappiness and rage, Babar is one of the few pleasant memories that I have. Me and Babar, kicking some motherfucking ass. James Frey
Reading gives one something to think about other than one’s self. Tom Bissell
Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good:
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow. William Wordsworth
I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their lips when reading. Vladimir Nabokov
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. Samuel Johnson
The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book. Samuel Johnson
If I could always read I should never feel the want of company. Lord Byron
Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons. Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading
Since we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our minds, it is our duty to furnish it well. Peter Ustinov
He had no money and no home; he lived entirely on the road of the racing circuit, sleeping in empty stalls, carrying with him only a saddle, his rosary, and his books ... The books were the closest thing he had to furniture, and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs. Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend