Quotes About Reading

she talked in one of her memoirs of ignoring her little brother when she was supposed to be looking after him: "I liked reading a book much more than I liked looking after him (and even now I like reading a book more than I like looking after my own children...)

Da bambina facevo esattamente la stessa cosa: mi sdraiavo sul letto con i piedi al sole sul davanzale della finestra perché a quel tempo avevo sempre i piedi freddi. Poi mi mettevo a leggere un libro, e questa scena con me sdraiata che leggo un libro mandava mia madre su tutte le furie, certa com'era che fossi destinata a una vita di indolenza, quando invece ero solo destinata a scrivere libri che altri avrebbero letto (34).

A nation becomes what its young people read in their youth. Its ideals are fashioned then, its goals strongly determined.

Every act of reading is an act of forgetting: the experience of reading is a palimpsest, in which each text partially covers those that came before. Those books that allow us to forget the most are accorded he authority of the classic.

That's my boy," he said warmly. "Six years old, and he can already read like I couldn't read when I was twice his age." Rufus felt a sudden hollowness in his voice, and all along the bar, and in his own heart. But how does he fight, he thought. You don't brag about smartness if your son is brave. He felt the anguish of shame, but his father did not seem to notice, except that as suddenly as he had lifted him up to the bar, he gently lifted him down again.

I have never met a mentally strong person who wasn't a voracious reader.

Cutters read the land like a text. They search the manuscript of the ground for irregularities in its narration. They know the plots and the images by heart. They can see where the punctuation goes. They are landscape grammarians, got the Ph.D. in reading dirt.

sobre García Lorca) Podía leer cualquier cosa, y la belleza brotaba siempre de sus labios. Tenía pasión, alegría, juventud. Era como una llama.

La gente lee en silencio, se mueve en silencio, hasta parece hablar en silencio

È difficile cucire armoniosamente assieme la responsabilità di un gregge amato da difendere e la giusta misura nel riprendere le pecore smarrite lungo la strada, traviate dall'intelletto, da cattive letture e insane deduzioni.

A theologian is born by living, nay dying and being damned, not by thinking, reading, or speculating.

I had reached a juncture in my reading life that is familiar to those who have been there: in the allotted time left to me on earth, should I read more and more new books, or should I cease with that vain consumption—vain because it is endless—and begin to reread those books that had given me the intensest pleasure in my past.

This dull, difficult novel I have brought with me on my trip—I keep trying to read it. I have gone back to it so many times, each time dreading it and each time finding it no better than the last time, that by now it has become something of an old friend. My old friend the bad novel.

How should you read? What should the diet of your reading be? Read the best writers from all different periods; keep your reading of contemporaries in proportion—you do not want a steady diet of contemporary literature. You already belong to your time.

Of course, any book, and any piece of writing, is already part of a cooperative. It is, in itself as printed on the page, incomplete. It requires a reader to complete it. But the reader may also misunderstand it, distort it in favor of another idea, forget large parts of it, misremember it, create something different in misremembering it, etc. All these responses are perfectly legitimate parts of the cooperative act.

Read the best writers from all different periods; keep your reading of contemporaries in proportion - you do not want a steady diet of contemporary literature. You already belong to your time.

My mom didn't want me to go to college. She didn't want me to read - when I read, I may as well have been holding a pineapple.

When I'm not writing or tweaking my computer, I do embroidery. When I'm not plunging into the past, tweaking, or embroidering, I'm reading books about history, computers, or embroidery.

When I'm not writing or tweaking my computer, I do embroidery. When I'm not plunging into the past, tweaking, or embroidering, I'm reading books about history, computers, or embroidery

That's absurd," I said with a little laugh. "Nobody can read too much. That's like saying someone breathes too much.

Librarians are serious people, seldom given to jocularity. The reason for this, I believe, is because we are overwhelmed by the enormous number of good books waiting to be read, leaving little time for frivolity.

Down Cut Shin Creek: The Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky by Kathi Appelt and Jeanne Cannella Schmitzer.

That's absurd," I said with a little laugh. "Nobody can read too much. That's like saying someone breathes too much.

Librarians are serious people, seldomgiven to idle jocularity. The reason for this, I believe, is because we are overwhelmed by the enormous number of good books waiting to be read, leaving little time for frivolity. My personal list of must-read books presents a daunting challenge; I can't even imagine the pressure our head librarian must be under.