Reading Quotes

My only wish is to be buried with my books.

~ Nikita Dudani

People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist.

~ Diane Setterfield

I'm not interested in the reviews by critics over the age of 15.

~ Mark A. Cooper

I read daily, not so much for the benefit of my writing, but because I am addicted to it. There is nothing in the world for me that compares to being lost in a really good novel. That said, reading is an absolute must if you want to write. It is a trite enough thing to say, but very true nonetheless. I cannot understand aspiring writers who email me for advice and freely admit that they read very little. I have learned something from every writer I have ever read. Sometimes I have done so consciously, picking up something about how to frame a scene, or seeing a new possibility with regards to structure, or interesting ways to write dialogue. Other times, I think, my collective reading experience affects my sensibilities and informs me in ways that I am not quite aware of, but in real ways that impact how I approach writing. The short of it is, as an aspiring writer, there is nothing as damaging to your credibility as saying that you don’t like to read

~ Khaled Hosseini

I am forever an advocate of books, both the reading of them and the writing. There is something sacred to me in that community. Because writing--and reading--is a solitary business. And it’s good to know I’m not alone.

~ Shannon Celebi

When my father first took me to Ennis Library I went down among the shelves and felt company, not only the company of writers, but the readers too, because they had lifted and opened and read these books. The books were worn in a way they can only get worn by hands and eyes and minds

~ Niall Williams

If you write without reading, you will certainly have too many books without readers.

~ M.f. Moonzajer

When reading a book, you are sold what some writer thought. When reading a newspaper, you are sold what someone did, and, what some advertiser made.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

What a feat of transmission: the emotive powers of the book, with no local habitation, pass safely from writer to reader, unmangled by printing and binding and shipping, renewed and available whenever we open it.

~ Lynne Sharon Schwartz

You may think that you don't want to read about the problems of being brought up Mennonite, but the great thing about books is that you'll read anything a good writer wants you to read.

~ Nick Hornby

This is the strange life of books that you enter along as a writer, mapping an unknown territory that arises as you travel. If you succeed in the voyage, others enter after, one at a time, also alone, but in communion with your imagination, traversing your route. Books are solitudes where we meet.

~ Rebecca Solnit

What is it about us lady authors and our fascination for the exclamation mark?

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

Just write. That's my only tip. And read. I guess that's two.

~ Shannon Celebi

Sometimes it is the reader that sucks, not the book.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

There are more writers who read than readers who write.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

To put an arrogant 'famous' writer in his place: pretend to be illiterate.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

It’s remarkable that a device, which fits in your pocket, can hold thousands of books. But a room full of books is an entirely different kind of remarkable.

~ Brandt Legg

Children's reading and children's thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which this country will rise. Or not rise. In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have a greater potential for good or evil than any other form of literature on earth.

~ Dr. Seuss

Aren't we all waiting to be read by someone, praying that they'll tell us that we make sense?

~ Rudy Francisco

Never give up, Never surrender!!!!!If you think you can't, then you must, if you must, then you can..Tony Robbins

~ Paula V. Hardin

The attraction of reading is that it allows you to live, for a few hours, as someone else—grants you access to their head, their thoughts, their secrets.

~ Alessandra Torre

I'm ready for another adventure now, take me far away please!Ok one more... But then you have to read to me!

~ Joseph Gordon-Levitt

The totally alive, totally conscious, and totally aware Universe takes care of itself completely. It is totally self-reliant and totally self- sufficient. it is perfect.

~ Chris Prentiss

There are two types of understanding in this world. There's the kind that comes from the reading and the hearing, and it doesn't penetrate the skin. It is surface knowledge, like a soft blanket that can be placed over the shoulders. And then there's the understanding that comes from doing. That kind of understanding is not soft. It is water that soaks into the rocks and earth, and makes the seeds grow. It is messy, and painful, and impossible to hold.

~ Aliya Whiteley

The only thing which can tell us about the novel is the novel.

~ Edwin Muir

Reading can only take you so far, up to the moment where you must take action with your own hands

~ Rae Carson

Read a poem at a time, or two, or all, but give them time to sink into your heart. Read them again, read a portion, and stop and ponder. Visualize. Take it slow; let the poem show you what lies in your own heart. Let it fuel the words from within.

~ Salil Jha

A series of books, dilapidated and faded, sit bundled together. Most of the bindings are separating from the yellowed pages, but each is at home in its battered state. Their wrinkled pages and discolored skin tell not of old age, but of a good life. These books, unlike so many others, were not just read, but revisited, loved, and experienced.

~ Kelseyleigh Reber

It's been well-thumbed, at least triple-read, there's that smell the fat orange-spine Penguins get when their pages have yellowed and the book bulges, basically the smell of complex humanity, sort of sweat and salt and endeavour. Like all the fat orange Penguins, it gets fatter with reading, which it should, because in a way the more you read it the bigger your own experience of the world gets, the fatter your soul.

~ Niall Williams

Stories, whether they're good or bad, are expressions of interactions within society. Some may be seen as 'boring', but in their own right, they are still stories to be explored. People throughout life have more exciting endeavours than others, and that can be the same for stories. It's just a matter of segregating comparisons between the senseless and the thoughtful. The norm and the unbiased. We are what we are. As are stories.

~ Corey Dale-Gardener

Experience life, pick up a good book and appreciate the moment, for the moment, not the replay.

~ Serina Hartwell

I do not have more information after reading a poem, I have more experience.

~ Eugene H. Peterson

Until writing was invented, man lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror. Speech is a social chart of this bog.

~ Marshall Mcluhan

Signs form a language, but not the one you think you know.

~ Italo Calvino

Language is a door. Words en-trance and are an entrance; they draw you in. When you read, the book you cradle disappears and the tales within unfold in your mind. Writing is a shelter of words and reading an interior adventure.

~ Laurie Seidler

The nature of poemsIs a matter of words and deedsAn intimate encounter of voiceIn the ache of the heartIn the labor of breathingA hesitant casting of eyesAway from the mundane to seeThat delicate and shiny thingIn the oddly prosaic rock pileAn extravagance of conceitAn abundance of graceA prayer for words to speak

~ Kendall Dana Lockerman

There is really only one way to learn good writing: good reading and extensive writing and revising.

~ Robert Lane Greene

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

Language spread its warm, absurd rays over all my adolescent thoughts, and I felt the way we all long to feel: moody, lonely, lovesick and explosive with the prospects of tomorrow.

~ Spencer Gordon

Language forces us to perceive the world as man presents it to us.

~ Julia Penelope