"Reading was like an addiction; I read while I ate, on the train, in bed until late at night, in school, where I'd keep the book hidden so I could read during class. Before long I bought a small stereo and spent all my time in my room, listening to jazz records. But I had almost no desire to talk to anyone about the experience I gained through books and music. I felt happy just being me and no one else. In that sense I could be called a stack-up loner."
Reading quotes
Reading
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Reading quotes (page 12 of 330)
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"Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it's right, it's easy. It's the other way round, too. If it's slovenly written, then it's hard to read. It doesn't give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader."
"All art is unstable. Its meaning is not necessarily that implied by the author. There is no authoritative voice. There are only multiple readings."
"Poetry is not the most important thing in life... I'd much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets."
"The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first."
"Some books leave us free and some books make us free."
"Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows. Waiting rooms were made for books— of course! But so are theater lobbies before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone’s favorite, the john. You can even read while you’re driving, thanks to the audiobook revolution. Of the books I read each year, anywhere from six to a dozen are on tape."
"A broader reading of history shows that appeasement, no matter how it is labeled, never fulfills the hopes of the appeasers."
"They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered."
"The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library,'The medicines of the soul."
"Two kinds of reading can be distinguished. I call them reading like a reader and reading like a writer ... when you read like a reader, you identify with the characters in the story. The story is what you learn about. When you read like a writer, you identify with the author and learn about writing."
"Books are what you step on to take you to a higher shelf. The higher your stack of books, the higher the shelf you can reach. Want to reach higher? Stack some more books under your feet! Reading is what brings us to new knowledge. It opens new doors. It helps us understand mysteries. It lets us hear from successful people. Reading is what takes us down the road in our journey. Everything you need for a better future and success has already been written."
"It is to be deeply regretted that the clergymen would oppose an effort to teach the people the Bible truths; nevertheless, we find much opposition everywhere, and many clergymen will attempt to prevent the people from reading what is here written."
"Much of my reading time over the last decade and a half has been spent reading aloud to my children. Those children's bedtime rituals of supper, bath, stories, and sleep have been a staple of my life and some of the best, most special times I can remember."
"It's been my experience in life if you just keep thinking and reading, you don't have to work."
"Words are the voice of the heart."
"To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter."
"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader."
"Reading in bed can be heaven, assuming you can get just the right amount of light on the page and aren't prone to spilling your coffee or cognac on the sheets."
"So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough."