Quotes About Reading

Books are for various purposes—tracts to teach, almanacs to sell, poetry to make pastry, but this is the rarest sort of book, a book to read.

I tell ye it was some work for me to get the knack o' readin'; but when it come it come!

If the critics are right that I've made all my decisions based on polls, then I must not be very good at reading them.

The only way you learn to write is by reading and studying the kind of thing you would like to write — and by writing.

This is worrisome, not only because he is reading a translation from the original Hebrew or Greek that has already involved a great deal of interpretation, but also because it is such a short distance between believing you possess an error-free message from God and believing that you are an error-free messenger of God.

You know sit with your arm around a little kid and read. It not only teaches them to read but it keeps the family strong.

Larentia, despite her extensive reading, was very ignorant about love

Her ticket to freedom lay in her lap. Ever an avid reader, Annie had escaped into books in recent months, when all else failed to calm her. As a friend, a book had advantages over the human variety. It was there whenever she needed it, it vanished as easily, and it never asked questions, expected witty replies, made awkward suggestions, or otherwise overcompensated for its own inability to right the wrongs of the world.

Experimental science is fascinating, but I don't want to do it. I want other people to do it, and I'll read about it.

Proust said we read to know ourselves; there are many more selves to know than can come to light in our ordinary lives. When we and the writer meet on the page our silent communion crosses centuries.

Inside each book a warm-blooded human being is reaching out to us, and whether we are being entertained or enlightened we are never alone while reading.

I simply don't shine in company. Mostly I prefer to retreat with a book.

Teaching literature is teaching how to read. How to notice things in a text that a speed-reading culture is trained to disregard, overcome, edit out, or explain away; how to read what the language is doing, not guess what the author was thinking; how to take evidence from a page, not seek a reality to substitute for it.

She had always been an unashamed reader of novels.

Dulcie always found a public library a little upsetting, for one saw so many odd people there.

Well, some books are destined never to be read,' said Mervyn. 'Its's the natural order of things.' Like women who are destined never to marry, though Ianthe.

It was no doubt significant that Mary Beamish should have the novels of Miss Goudge while Piers had those of Miss Compton-Burnett,

People do seem to be ashamed of admitting that they read poetry,' said Jane, 'unless they have a degree in English—it is permissible then.

His books distracted him for a while. They were like the aspirins you take when you've got a headache. They kill the pain for two hours and then it comes back.

Eyeglasses had been in use since the turn of the century, allowing old people to read more in their later years and greatly extending the scholar's life of study. The manufacture of paper as a cheaper and more plentiful material than parchment was beginning to make possible multiple copies and wider distribution of literary works.

One aristocratic leader's club was known for, "an atmosphere of solemn tranquility, in which reading, dozing, and meditation took precedence over conversation.

One English nobleman and statesman read and reread a particular work of literature because it was "the only book which allowed him to forget politics.

A noise came from the upstairs hall; I heard the bookshelves fall. A ghost was reading poetry to entertain us all.

La cuestión es, supongo, que me volví adicto a leer, si se puede llamar leer a esa forma rara y acelerada de experimentar los libros, demasiada rápida para entender lo que se estaba contando o lo que significaban las frases.