Quotes About Reading

I hate requests. They make me feel unhappy. It's like when I take a book out of the library. As soon as I start to read it, all I can think about is when I'll finish it.

It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature, but I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short. (...) If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That's the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that.

Reading aloud is different from just following sentences with your eyes. Something quite unexpected wells up in your mind, a kind of indefinable resonance that I find impossible to resist.

Devouring books came as naturally to us as breathing.

Waves of consciousness roll in, roll out, leave some writing, and just as quickly new waves roll in and erase it. I try to quickly read what's written there, but it's hard.

That is dreamreading. As the birds leave south or north in their season, the Dreamreader has dreams to read.

Cuando leo un libro malo,tengo la sensación de haber malgastado el tiempo. Y eso me decepciona. Antes no me sucedía. Disponía de mucho tiempo y, aunque pensara: «¡Vaya tontería acabo de leer!», siempre tenía la impresión de que algo habría sacado de allí. Dentro de lo que cabía, claro. Pero ahora no. Sólo pienso que he perdido el tiempo. Quizá tenga que ver con hacerse viejo.

She reads with great concentration. Her eyes rarely move from the pages of the book.

He was a far more voracious reader than me, but he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least 30 years. That's the only kind of book I can trust, he said. It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature, he added, but I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short.

Todo un libro tras otro, los abro: la mayoría conserva entre sus páginas el olor de épocas pretéritas. Un aroma muy especial a conocimientos profundos y a emociones desatadas que, entre cubierta y cubierta, llevan mucho tiempo sumidos en un apacible sueño. Aspiro el aroma, hojeo algunas páginas y devuelvo los libros a la estantería.

I think serious readers of books are 5% of the population. If there are good TV shows or a World Cup or anything, that 5% will keep on reading books very seriously, enthusiastically. And if a society banned books, they would go into the forest and remember all the books. So I trust in their existence. I have confidence.

He had read many books over the years, but he owned few. He tended to dislike filling his home with a lot of possessions. When he finished a book, unless it was something quite special, he would take it to a used-book store. He bought only books he knew he was going to read right away, and he would read the ones he cared about very closely, until they were ingrained in his mind. When he needed other books he would borrow them from the neighborhood library.

Io leggevo molto i libri, è vero, ma non leggevo molti libri, perché a me piaceva leggere più volte quelli che amavo […] Leggevo e rileggevo lo stesso libro molte volte, e a volte chiudevo gli occhi e mi riempivo i polmoni del suo odore. Il semplice annusare quel libro, scorrere le dita tra le pagine, per me era la felicità»

Si vous n'avez jamais lu Hamlet au cours de votre vie, c'est comme si vous l'aviez passée au fond d'une mine de charbon ».

Leía mucho, lo que no quiere decir que leyera muchos libros. Más bien prefería releer las obras que me habían gustado. (...) Así pues, no tenía este punto en común con los demás, y leía mis libros a solas y en silencio. Los releía y cerraba los ojos y me llenaban de su aroma. Sólo aspirando la fragancia de un libro, tocando sus páginas, me sentía feliz.

reading too much useless information makes you 46% less likely to think clearly

I'm never reading poetry again unless it's by James Whitcomb Riley!" And I went storming out of the house to try and shake off the injury done to me with words.

If they wanted to have time to read a book in the evenings, that was as important as any of Napoleon's ambitions. Because what a triumph it was for any woman to have time for herself—and to be able to do something that benefitted her imagination alone.

Every time that you read a book, it is like depositing money in the bank. You spend every weekend reading a pile of books this big, I swear to you that you are going to be a rich man.

Ich las das langweilige Buch, schlief darüber ein, im Schlafe träumte ich, weiter zu lesen, erwachte vor Langeweile, und das dreimal.

Maybe reading was just a way to make her feel less alone, to keep her company. When you read something you are stopped, the moment is stayed, you can sometimes be there more fully than you can in your real life.

When one reads hurriedly and nervously, having in mind written tests and examinations, one's brain becomes encumbered with a lot of bric-a-brac for which there seems to be little use.

First — How did I become a Socialist? By reading.

I never show my books to Ricky. His writing is very different, and anyway, he's only read one novel in his life: 'The Catcher in the Rye.'