Daniel Pennac Quotes

We human beings build houses because we're alive but we write books because we're mortal. We live in groups because we're sociable but we read because we know we're alone. Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one's place but that no one can replace either. It offers no definitive explanation of our destiny but links us inextricably to life. Its tiny secret links remind us of how paradoxically happy we are to be alive while illuminating how tragically absurd life is.

~ Daniel Pennac

We keep quiet about what we read. Our enjoyment of a book remains a jealously guarded secret. Perhaps because there`s no need to talk, or because it takes time to distill what we've read before we can say anything. Silence is our guarantee of intimacy. We might have finished reading but we`re still livingthe book.

~ Daniel Pennac

When you buy a jacket, it’s important the pockets are big enough for a paperback!

~ Daniel Pennac

Our children start out as good readers and will remain so if the adults around them nourish their enthusiasm instead of trying to prove themselves. If we stimulate their desire to learn before making them recite out loud; if we support them in their efforts instead of trying to catch them out; if we give up whole evenings instead of trying to save time; if we make the present come alive without threatening them with the future; if we refuse to turn pleasure into a chore but nurture it instead. If we do all this, we ourselves will rediscover the pleasure of giving freely-- because all cultural apprenticeship is free.

~ Daniel Pennac

If reading isn't about communication, it is, in the end, about sharing. But a deferred and fiercely selective kind of sharing.

~ Daniel Pennac

Time to read is always time stolen. (Like time to write, for that matter, or time to love).Stolen from what?From the tyranny of living.

~ Daniel Pennac

We human beings build houses because we're alive, but we write books because we're mortal. We live in groups because we're sociable, but we read because we know we're alone. Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one's place, but that no one can replace either.

~ Daniel Pennac

What we need to understand is that books weren't written so that young people could write essays about them, but so that they could read them if they really wanted to.Knowledge, academic track record, career, and social life are one thing. Our intimacy and cultural awareness as readers are quite another.

~ Daniel Pennac

Rather than allowing a book's intelligence to speak through our mouths, we replace it with our own intelligence as we talk about it. Rather than acting as emissary for the book, we become guardians of the temple, boasting of its wonders in the very words that slam shut it's doors: Reading matters! Reading matters!

~ Daniel Pennac

Reassured, we left their bedroom without understanding-- or wanting to admit-- that what a child learns first isn't the act but the gestures that accompany the act. And although it may also help them learn, this ostentatious show of reading is primarily intended to reassure them and please us.

~ Daniel Pennac

We see that that ritual of reading every evening at the end of the bed when they were so little--set time, set gestures-- was like a prayer.

~ Daniel Pennac

But reading is different, reading is something you do. With TV, and cinema for that matter, everything’s handed to you on a plate, nothing has to be worked at, they just spoon-feed you. The picture, the sound, the scenery, the atmospheric music in case you haven’t understood what the director’s on about… The creaking door that tells you to be stiff. You have to imagine it all when you’re reading.

~ Daniel Pennac

I have never experienced a sorrow that was not relieved by an hour of reading.

~ Daniel Pennac

The question isn't whether I have time to read or not (time that nobody will ever give me, by the way), but whether I'll allow myself the pleasure of being a reader.

~ Daniel Pennac

Reading is an act of resistance. Against what? Against all constraints.

~ Daniel Pennac

Each country thinks its school is in a specific crisis, without ever linking the school's crisis to that of the society around it.

~ Daniel Pennac