Quotes About Reading

Books don't change people; paragraphs do; sometimes even sentences.

Books don't change people; paragraphs do, Sometimes even sentences.

Reading is more important to me than eating.

Reading only a bit of a great book (e.g., Plato's Republic) is like getting engaged but never marrying. The initial experience is pleasurable but can become frustrating if prolonged.

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.

How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?

A book worth reading is worth owning.

If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.

You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

Patience is the chiefest fruit of study; a man that strives to make himself different from other men by much reading gains this chiefest good, that in all fortunes he hath something to entertain and comfort himself withal.

In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.

I guess there are never enough books.

I was hooked. He started me with shorter reads, books such as Endurance,7 which chronicled Ernest Shackleton's adventures in Antarctica. Later he led me into much larger challenges, such as Undaunted Courage,8 which depicts the journey of Lewis and Clark, and many more interesting and exciting literary adventures. I often exchanged these books with my dad and Coach Pickett back home for their best choices as well, which included Truman,9 and Freedom from Fear.10 I

Academic readers of literary texts, since they do it for a living, tend to think they are more scrupulous than the general public who merely read for pleasure.

People who read too many books get quirky. We can't have too much eccentricity or it would bankrupt us. Market research depends on people behaving as if they were all alike.

I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.

Listen, you don't knock my reading habits and I won't knock your old black and white flat films.

Cirocco liked space, reading, and sex, not necessarily in that order. She had never been able to satisfactorily combine all three, but two was not bad.

If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!

You should never read just for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, 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.

We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don't have books, don't fuck them.

I'm always amazed at friends who say they try to read at night in bed but always end up falling asleep. I have the opposite problem. If a book is good I can't go to sleep, and stay up way past my bedtime, hooked on the writing. Is anything better than waking up after a late-night read and diving right back into the plot before you even get out of bed to brush your teeth?

You have to remember that it is impossible to commit a crime while reading a book.