Readers Quotes

The characters within a book were, from a certain point of view, identical on some fundamental level ‒ there weren't any images of them, no physical tangibility whatsoever. They were pictures in the reader's head, constructs of imagination and ideas, given shape by the writer's work and skill and the reader's imagination. Parents, of a sort.

~ Jim Butcher

And she is the readerwho browses the shelfand looks for new worldsbut finds herself.

~ Laura Purdie Salas

I never minded the random scribblings of other readers, found them interesting in fact. It is a truth universally acknowledged that people write the darndest things in the margins of their books.

~ Tara Bray Smith

The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or gravely. For he will read 'in the same spirit that the author writ.'... He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison.

~ C.s. Lewis

Perhaps they were looking for passion; perhaps they delved into this book as into a mysterious parcel - a gift box at the bottom of which, hidden in layers of rustling tissue paper, lay something they'd always longed for but couldn't ever grasp.

~ Margaret Atwood

Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book's eventual fate.

~ Edward Abbey

Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.

~ Carol Shields

Of all books printed, probably not more than half are ever read. Many are embalmed in public libraries; many go into private quarters to fill spaces; many are glanced at and put away...scarcely opened until the fire needs kindling. The most ardent book-lovers are not always the greatest readers; indeed, the rabid bibliomaniac seldom reads at all. To him books are as ducats to the miser, something to be hoarded and not employed... So pleasant it is to buy book; so tiresome to utilize them.

~ Flora Haines Loughead

She read all sorts of things: travels, and sermons, and old magazines. Nothing was so dull that she couldn't get through with it. Anything really interesting absorbed her so that she never knew what was going on about her. The little girls to whose houses she went visiting had found this out, and always hid away their story-books when she was expected to tea. If they didn't do this, she was sure to pick one up and plunge in, and then it was no use to call her, or tug at her dress, for she neither saw nor heard anything more, till it was time to go home.

~ Susan Coolidge

There were the people who read and there were the others. Whether you were a reader or a nonreader--it was quickly noted. There was no greater distinction between people. People were amazed when he asserted that and many shook their head at such crankiness. But that's how it was.

~ Pascal Mercier

Great readers (are) those who know early that there is never going to be time to read all there is to read, but do their darnedest anyway.

~ Larry Mcmurtry

...but one can't be irredeemable who shows reverence for books.

~ Laini Taylor

A good reader should always have two books with him: one to read, the other one to lend.

~ Gabrielle Dubois

Books gnaw at me from around the edges of my life, demanding more time and attention. I am always left hungry.

~ Pamela Paul

Every reader writes the book he or she reads, supplying what isn't there, and that creative invention becomes the book.

~ Siri Hustvedt

Whenever one of us introduced an old favorite, we savored the other's first delight like a shared meal eaten with a newly acquired gusto, as if we'd never truly tasted it before.

~ Pamela Paul

To whom do books belong? The books we read and the books we write are both ours and not ours. They're also theirs.

~ Pamela Paul

Hey, pretty book, why don’t you lie in my lap awhile?

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Well… Actually, just read any books you find interesting will do. Even books that seem boring aren’t actually that dull. It’s just that the reader couldn’t find the interesting parts.

~ Yukiya Murasaki

Those who spend the greater part of their time in reading or writing books are, of course, apt to take rather particular notice of accumulations of books when they come across them. They will not pass a stall, a shop, or even a bedroom-shelf without reading some title, and if they find themselves in an unfamiliar library, no host need trouble himself further about their entertainment.

~ M.r. James

Life is truly a matter of choices, reactions, and actions...each and every choice is governed by our reactions which in turn affect our actions and consequently the future turn of events

~ Kapil Kumar Bhaskar

Novelists and the literary world play an important part in shaping languages. The Swahili they write influence the readers and their languages. The literary obstacle in Tanzania is not that people do not read, but that they don’t read because there are no interesting writers.

~ Enock Maregesi

A fleeting second on someone's news feed,No dearth of meanings for those who read,Not my stories but 'tis what I think,I say I don't write poems, I just write dreams.

~ Sanhita Baruah

I'm not saying that you have to be a reader to save your soul in the modern world. I'm saying it helps.

~ Walter Mosely

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.

~ George R.r. Martin

Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.

~ Napoléon Bonaparte

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

All these are readers, and their gestures, their craft, the pleasure, the responsibility and the power they derive from reading, are common with mine. I am not alone.

~ Alberto Manguel

He always thinks because I'm reading, I'm not doing anything. There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extroverted.

~ Pierce Brown

The books and magazines streamed in. He could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. … they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality.

~ Thomas Mann

The way a book is read- which is to say,the qualities a reader brings to a book- can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it.

~ Norman Cousins

Since the age of five I had been one of those people who was an indefatigable reader, more inclined to go off by myself with a book than do any of the dozens of things that children usually do to amuse themselves. I never aged out of it.

~ Anna Quindlen

Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'.

~ Iris Murdoch

This is every reader's catch-22: the more you read, the more you realize you haven't read; the more you yearn to read more, the more you understand that you have, in fact, read nothing. There is no way to finish, and perhaps that shouldn't be the goal.

~ Pamela Paul

Books are a portable kind of time travel. We go back as well as forward when we read them. When we come back into the now, after being immersed in worlds previously unknown to us, we find ourselves, transformed. Touched by their magic, nothing we ever perceived beforehand remains quite the same.

~ Suzy Davies

When someone tells me to 'just relax,' I wonder why they don’t hand me a book?

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Every book begins and ends with other people- the readers who suggest the book to us and encourage us to read it, the talented author who crafted each word, the fascinating individuals we meet inside the pages- and the readers we discuss and share the book with when we finish.

~ Donalyn Miller

I don't read books to finish them, I read to consume them.

~ Temitope Ibrahim

Nothing irritates me so as the flatness of people’s imagination.

~ Henry James

So you’re a reader,” My mom sighs, as if somehow this elevates Isabel to yet another realm of perfection.

~ Denis Markell