Quotes About Reading

Children who read are, yes, likely to excel academically, but there's much more to the picture. The latest research shows that children who read at home are also better at self-regulation and executive function—those life skills that make us happier and well adjusted: controlling impulses, paying attention, setting goals and figuring out how to achieve them.

My sort wants the book in its entirety. We need to touch it, to examine the weight of its paper and the way text is laid out on the page. People like me open books and inhale the binding, favoring the scents of certain glues over others, breathing them in like incense even as the chemicals poison our brains. We consume them.

When I look through Bob, the actual stories between his mottled covers may have been written by others, but they belong to me now. Nobody else on the planet has read this particular series of books in this exact order and been affected in precisely this way. Each of us could say the same about our respective reading trajectories. Even if we don't keep a physical Book of Books, we all hold our books somewhere inside us and live by them. They become our stories.

A minute spent reading to your kids now will repay itself a million-fold later," the author George Saunders

At the dinner table, make "what you're reading" as regular a part of conversation

School is where children learn that they have to read. Home is where kids learn to read because they want to. It's where they learn to love to read.

It's stressful to be a parent. It's stressful to be a person. But I've found that even in the most difficult moments, on the most challenging days, I can usually reach for a book and feel lifted up, returned to myself. On days when I've felt as though I have nothing left to give to my kids, I've been able to sit next to them and open a book. We start reading, and the world looks different.

There was a shiftiness to kids who secreted themselves in a corner to read God knows what instead of what they should have been doing. Reading when you were supposed to be raking the leaves, reading when you were supposed to be sleeping, reading when you were supposed to be making the bed, not lying in it. I did everything I could to read my way out of doing anything else. It was the one thing I was good at.

Books are a pleasure and they anchor your greater values.

According to studies that measure the likelihood of a child growing up to be a reader, the most important factor is not how well reading was taught in the child's school, nor the number of hours spent reading aloud to the child. Regardless of the parents' income level or education, the statistic most highly correlated to literacy is the number of books present in the home.

Unlike his compatriots - many of whom were still, in their mid-twenties, adolescent posturers, doomed to futility - he had an engaging earnestness about him. Unlike them, he realized his incompleteness as a person and strove to overcome that. One of the ways in which he did that was by reading. He didn't read much, or too widely, but attentively, looking for instruction, hints for self-improvement, and he read serious books.

Le livre est un morceau de silence dans les mains du lecteur. Celui qui écrit se tait. Celui qui lit ne rompt pas le silence.

Un livre est un peu de silence entre les mains du lecteur. Celui qui écrit calme. Celui qui le lit ne rompt pas le silence.

Lire c'est errer. La lecture est l'errance.

J'aime la lecture car c'est la seule conversation à laquelle on peut couper court à tout instant, et dans l'instant.

You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.

Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence. You touch them as they quiver with a divine pleasure. You read them and they fall asleep to happy dreams for the next 10 years. If you do them the favor of understanding them, of taking in their portions of grief and wisdom, then they settle down in contented residence in your heart.

It was a surprise, and a delight, to see children devour books. Without ever knowing it, they were receiving an education.

Our role is to encourage, not discourage, reading.

As he grew, what he lacked in formal education, he made up for through diligent, determined reading. The where, when, and how of reading mattered not to Abraham Lincoln, who said, "The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places ... Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other thing.

I read as if time were running out, because technically it is. As I grow older I find I'm increasingly impatient with mediocre entertainments; I want books that will take my breath away and realign my vision - Barbara Kingsolver

Books are health food for your brain and dessert for your soul. Books are one of the few proven sources of mental exercise known to man. Reading is a workout for your mind. If your body needs thirty minutes of exercise a day, so does your thinker.

Not only was he one of history's greatest leaders, Abraham Lincoln was one of history's most devoted readers. Doris Kearns Goodwin writes of Lincoln, "Books became his academy, his college. The printed word united his mind with the great minds of generations past.

Don't let reading make you arrogant. It can happen-believe me. Maybe you've even met a person or two like this, someone who thinks that being an English literature major or particularly well read puts them above the crowd. Take my advice:even if it's true, don't go there. ... I urge you to read, knowing the words you absorb will come out in your life in ways that inspire, uplift and encourage someone else. Life is meant to be passed on. Read with a servant's heart.