Quotes About Reading

You may have tangible wealth untold; Casketes of jewels and coffers of gold, Richer than I you can never be— I had a Mother who read to me. —STRICKLAND GILLIAN

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape – into different countries, mores, speech patterns – but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life's subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic.

As a child, I wanted only two things - to be left alone to read my library books, and to get away from my provincial hometown and go to London to be a writer. And I always knew that when I got there, I wanted to make loads of money.

I have always kept a stack of library books next to my bed as a lifeline. If I ever woke in the middle of the night too scared to move or too sad to roll over, the books were my saviors.

Once more, he was immersing himself in books, reaching the end of long articles, even going back over paragraphs to make sure he'd grasped things. How much more satisfying it was than all that skimming, all that jumping around. At present, he was working his way, deliciously, through a book on Mendel, the father of genetics. A man who might not have spend seven years watching peas, if he'd had the internet.

But the not-very-highbrow truth of the matter was that the reading was how I got my ya-yas out. For the sake of my bookish reputation I upgraded to Tolstoy and Steinbeck before I understood them, but my dark secret was that really, I preferred the junk. The Dragonriders of Pern, Flowers in the Attic, The Clan of the Cave Bear. This stuff was like my stash of Playboys under the mattress.

She must have read Shaw's story a few years before. Yes, that must have been it. She had read the story and clearly enjoyed it, to the extent that she had copied it, verbatim, into a notebook reserved for that purpose. Then, finding an assignment due for my class, she had paged through said notebook, stumbled across Shaw's narrative, and forgotten that Shaw, rather than Tara Tappani, was its rightful author. A simple mix-up.

Detrás de este triste espectáculo de palabras, tiembla indeciblemente la esperanza de que me leas, de que no haya muerto del todo en tu memoria...

Leemos por placer, y ya se sabe que el placer no tiene buena memoria y casi en seguida busca renovarse en una nueva experiencia placentera igualmente fugitiva.

During his reading hours, which were between one and five o'clock in the morning, but not every morning, he had come to the disconcerting conclusion that whistling was not an important theme in literature.

Lo que pasa es que se creen sabios -dice de golpe-. Se creeen sabios porque han juntado un montón de libros y se los han comido.

La falta de experiencia es inevitable, si leo a Joyce estoy sacrificando automáticamente otro libro y viceversa, etc.

Quien más quien menos, mis cuatro primos carnales se dedican a la filosofía. Leen libros, discuten entre ellos y son admirados a distancia por el resto de la familia

La melancolía de una vida demasiado corta para tantas bibliotecas, etc. La falta de experiencia es inevitable, si leo a Joyce estoy sacrificando automáticamente otro libro y viceversa

Realmente nu m? mâhneÅŸte din cale-afar? c? nu l-am citit pe Jouhandeau în întregime, cel mai mult m? încearca melancolia ca viaÅ£a e prea scurt? pentru atâtea biblioteci.

Los libros van siendo el único lugar de la casa donde todavía se puede estar tranquilo.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

I certainly couldn't have survived my childhood without books. All that deprivation and pain--abuse, broken home, a runaway sister, a brother with cancer--the books allowed me to withstand. They sustained me. I read still, prolifically, with great passion, but never like I read in those days: in those days it was life or death.

And all I did was read, and when I was too high to read I stared out the windows.

Magda was reading a book by a Trappist, in a better mood, and I was sitting on the edge of the bed, fingering my useless map.

You're the only person I've ever met who can stand a bookstore as long as I can.

Papi was a voracious reader, couldn't even go cheating without a paperback in his pocket.

What is clear is that being a reader/fanboy (for lack of a better term) helped him get through the rough days of his youth, but it also made him stick out in the mean streets of Paterson even more than he already did.

Peter held up the book he had been reading: 'Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'. "To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure this is English," Peter said. "It's taken me most of today to get through a page.