Quotes About Reading

Reading was closely connected with eating; it was food for the soul. As food nourished physical life, reading nourished prayer. Hence, public reading during meals is a very ancient monastic custom. The reading that the members of a community heard in common, at meals and at other times, helped give them their unique culture.

I just read an 800-page history of the Scottish Enlightenment and, honestly, I may as well just start it again now, because I cannot remember a single thing. I can barely remember where Scotland is.

I'm a reading addict. I can't live without it, like someone who is addicted to drugs.

I love books. If they are good books, I love them even more. But even if they are bad books, I still love them.

The Master said, "Fa-ta, when your mind practices, it reads the Lotus. When it doesn't practice, the Lotus does the reading. When your mind is true, it reads the Lotus. When your mind is false, the Lotus does the reading. When you develop the understanding of a buddha, you read the Lotus. When you develop the understanding of an ordinary being, the Lotus reads you.

I am a very 'unvoracious' reader, and since I can seldom bring myself to read a work twice I think of the many things that I read – too soon! Nothing, not even a (possible) deeper appreciation, for me replaces the bloom on a book, the freshness of the unread. Still what we read and when goes, like the people we meet, by 'fate.' Letter 189 From a letter to Mrs M. Wilson

The availability of books is not the same as reading them, nor reading the same as understanding them.

Hitler's unmethodical, even casual, approach to the flood of often serious matters of government brought to his attention was a guarantee of administrative disorder. 'He disliked reading files,' recalled Wiedemann. 'I got decisions out of him, even on very important matters, without him ever asking me for the relevant papers. He took the view that many things sorted themselves out if they were left alone.

booths—all empty; she saw people who could not even read thrust arms, hands, fingers through the press of bodies around the news-vendors' machines to tear a sheet fresh off the printer and struggle to understand just what it was in those squiggling lines that was standing the world on its head.

A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.

My parents were keen for me to have the education they themselves never had. They weren't able to guide me towards particular books, but they encouraged me to read, which I did, randomly and compulsively.

A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.

John Rebus ~ he tried to walk through the isles (of the book shop) without focusing. If he focused he would become interested and if he became interested he would buy. He already had over fifty unread books at home, piled next to his bed

Also, he was more discriminating now than he had been then, back in the old days when he would read a book to its bitter end whether he liked it or not. These days, a book he disliked was unlikely to last ten pages of his concentration.

Ahí estaban los libros, en el cuarto de estar. Los libros de leer solían acabar en el dormitorio, en el suelo en filas, como enfermos en la sala de espera del médico.

His eyes beheld beauty not in reality but in the printed word. Standing in the waiting-room, he realized that in his life he had accepted secondary experience -- the experience of reading someone else's thoughts -- over real life.

Reading the Koran on its own terms, trying to interpret it without resorting to commentaries, is a difficult and questionable exercise because of the nature of the text-its allusive and referential style and its grammatical and logical discontinuities, as well as our lack of sure information about its origins and the circumstances of its composition. Often such a reading seems arbitrary and necessarily inconclusive. G. R. Hawting

Por qué la gente siempre pregunta si los libros son buenos, sin preguntarse si están en condiciones de beneficiarse de ellos?

The best shop is of course a shop of knowledge; a bookshop.

Education is what you get from reading the small print; experience is what you get from not reading it.

that feeling of wonderful stupefaction from which one generally seeks to protect those who pass their time reading books or magazines, I have made every effort to produce.

President Clinton signed a $10 million deal to write a book by 2003. Isn't that amazing? Yes, and get this, not only that, President Bush signed a $10 million deal to read a book by 2003.

Egerton taught her how to approach a challenging book. She should read and reread slowly, making marginal notes when she came across something important, and mark things she didn't understand. He instructed her to think over each evening what she had read that day and jot down her ideas about it. She was a willing and eager pupil

Oh, Poe, yes. I was reading Poe when I was in Savannah, when I was ten, and scaring myself to death. Scaring my brothers and sisters to death, too.