Reading Quotes

The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.)

~ C.s. Lewis

I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours.

~ Virginia Woolf

Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even sit up in bed till early dawn, trowing your whole tomorrow out of whack, simply to find out what happens to some people who, you know perfectly well, are made up.

~ Barbara Kingsolve

This is what Laura loved about literature. You could see things in it that perhaps weren’t there, but might be. And even that didn’t matter if, in the end, readers needed something to be there. They could bring their somethings to a text, as co-creators, embedding a needed reality in the story that, if it was flexible enough, would allow new threads to take their place beside the author’s.

~ L.l. Barkat

If you cannot judge a book by its cover, surely we should not judge an author by one book alone?

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own. You may not appreciate them at first. You may pine for your novel of crude and unadulterated adventure. You may, and will, give it the preference when you can. But the dull days come, and the rainy days come, and always you are driven to fill up the chinks of your reading with the worthy books which wait so patiently for your notice. And then suddenly, on a day which marks an epoch in your life, you understand the difference. You see, like a flash, how the one stands for nothing, and the other for literature. From that day onwards you may return to your crudities, but at least you do so with some standard of comparison in your mind. You can never be the same as you were before. Then gradually the good thing becomes more dear to you; it builds itself up with your growing mind; it becomes a part of your better self, and so, at last, you can look, as I do now, at the old covers and love them for all that they have meant in the past.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Sometimes, in the course of my hopeless quest, I would pick up and dip into one of the ordinary books that lay strewn around the castle. Whenever I did, it seemed so insipid and insubstantial that I flew into a rage and hurled it at the wall after reading the first few sentences. I was spoilt for any other form of literature, and the mental torment I endured was comparable to the agony of unrequited love compounded by the withdrawal symptoms associated with a severe addiction.

~ Walter Moers

Don’t let me get sappy on you, but when you get right down to it, every collection of letters is a magic spell, even if it’s a moronic proclamation by the Emperor. Words have their impact, girl. Mind your manners. I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that’s almost the same thing.

~ Gregory Maguire

In politics no permanent friends, no permanent enemies but permanent interest.

~ Patience Johnson

He claimed he had read the book so many times that the words had fallen out of it and the pages were all blank so he had to read the book to put the words back in or the book would be forlorn and naked.

~ Brian Doyle

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but those well-arranged words are worth a multi-million-dollar motion picture.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

The stories books tell transcend those of the characters inked upon their pages. A book discloses far more about the person who reads it.

~ Kelseyleigh Reber

I read everything in that dusty little library. I read the prologues and the epilogues until I could tell you how many times Stephen King thanked his wife, Tabitha. I could tell you how the Columbia Indians made their long-houses, or how to make a solar toilet, or how to dry bear meat in the sun. I could tell you all of this if I could talk, but instead the words stayed inside of me and marveled. This I could accept, or so I told myself for a long time. Because the words were there, and they carried me to another place.

~ Rene Denfeld

The church trembled and the hail hammered the roof, but his words glided in the air, joyful and bright like the birds at the cliffs. They floated freely around one another without colliding and the wind carried them high up into heaven.

~ Fridik Erlings

Since I stopped writing, I read more than ever. Other people's words, not my own--my words are gone.

~ Jennifer Niven

And you never fall behind?”“Of course I do. But I always feel guilty when that happens. After all, my journal is the oldest and most loyal friend I have. And it never interrupts me when I’m speaking,” he added, with a boyish grin.

~ Zack Love

It was words and reading that had made me quiet, and being quiet had made me a mark.

~ Charles M. Blow

I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside, I would either read or a pencil and a penny version-book would be in my hand, to note the features of the scene or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

it's doesn't matter how long you spend the time writing words , the only thing that matter , is for how long your words will have an influence on their reader .

~ Mahdi Khmili

I look at words as if they were entities, sacred beings. There are words to which I tip my hat when I see them sitting on a page.

~ William Luce

There is nothing like the moment you connect with a reader! Nothing like the response that you get when what you have written touches someone in some way. It's a moment in which your work is almost a co-creation, you and the reader joining forces to make your words live.

~ Dani Harper

Some words have to be explicitly uttered, Lenore. Only by actually uttering certain words does one really DO what one SAYS. ‘Love’ is one of those words, performative words. Some words can literally make things real.

~ David Foster Wallace

It is our duty and our joy to communicate our hearts to each other. Words assist us in this task.

~ Kate Dicamillo

He read it over twenty times and though the darkness that sang on held steady about him, the unhurried words fell bright through his mind, going down golden through deep water, and when one passed another came, ceaselessly, shining.

~ Elizabeth Spencer

I like the sound of words, but I don't ever really expect my slow, slanted impression of the world to change by what I read.

~ Gregory Maguire

Depression can be due to a low endocrine function, nutritional deficiencies, blood sugar problems, food allergies, or systemic yeast infection. Depression can also result from medical illnesses such as stroke, heart attack, cancer, Parkinson's disease, and hormonal disorder. It can also be caused by a serious loss, a difficult relationship, a financial problem, or any stressful, unwelcome life change.

~ Chris Prentiss

At any rate, during the few hours when the depressive state itself eased off long enough to permit the luxury of concentration, I had recently filled this vacuum with fairly extensive reading and I had absorbed many fascinating and troubling facts

~ William Styron

Reading is a beautiful prayer for knowledge.

~ Debasish Mridha

Book:Sharing of life and experiences with other people.This is lifetime notes for all generations.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

A book may be regarded as irrelevant until it's relevance, importance and purpose is discovered through reading

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Never stop dreaming or reading.

~ A.b. Shepherd

The First BookOpen it.Go ahead, it won't bite.Well. . . maybe a little.More a nip, like. A tingle.It's pleasurable, really.You see, it keeps on opening.You may fall in.Sure, it's hard to get started;remember learning to useknife and fork? Dig in:you'll never reach bottom.It's not like it's the end of the world--just the world as you thinkyou know it.

~ Rita Dove

Education stimulates self-study.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The more you know, the more you know you know nothing.

~ Markus W. Lunner

I take the book stopped at a fold, deliver myself to its pace, to the breathing of the other storyteller. If I am someone else, it's also because books move men more than journeys or tears.After many pages you end up learning a variant, a different move than the one taken and thought inevitable.I break away from what I am when I learn to treat my own life differently.

~ Erri De Luca

Vân Uoc decided that she too would get to know the book inside out. And something miraculous happened when they were about a quarter of the way through reading it. After weeks of ploughing and hesitating, something clicked; she stopped stumbling over the unknown words and long sentences. Words magically started to reveal meaning, most of the time anyway, through context. And the sentences themselves stopped being obstacles and started telling a story. Her eyes were racing ahead; she was comprehending the shape and rhythm of the language.

~ Fiona Wood

Buying a book is not enough... You must absorb the knowledge it contains. Your personalized knowledge is not what's on your shelf, but how much you put into yourself!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

Euripides questioned everything. He was a misanthrope who preferred books to men.

~ Edith Hamilton

Much is known by reading, more is mastered by doing.

~ T.f. Hodge

Go ahead, and fear not. You will have a full library at your service.

~ Doris Kearns Goodwin