Reading quotes
6.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside reading — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself."
"Every new book I read comes to be a part of that overall and unitary book that is the sum of my readings...if you need little to set the imagination going, I require even less: the promise of reading is enough."
"Reading and writing don't inevitably go together. You can read without learning a thing about writing, grammar, or spelling, although, you certainly can't learn anything about writing, grammar, or spelling unless you read."
"But I also think that once you've found stuff that works, stop reading forums, stop reading reviews and just get out there and play."
"I haven't felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music along with reading and writing for too many years now. I feel guilty beyond words about these things. For example, when we're backstage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins, it doesn't affect me the way in which it did for Freddy [sic] Mercury who seemed to love, relish in the love and adoration from the crowd, which is something I totally admire and envy."
"It is not about reading the Word. It is about obeying the Word."
"It's good to know how to read, but it's dangerous to know how to read and not how to interpret what you're reading."
"Reading is not walking on the words; it's grasping the soul of them."
"I love my friends and family, but I also love it when they can't find me and I can spend all day reading or walking all alone, in silence, eight thousand miles away from everyone. All alone and unreachable in a foreign country is one my most favorite possible things to be."
"Literacy is part of everyday social practice - it mediates all aspects of everyday life. Literacy is always part of something else - we are always doing something with it. Its what we choose to do with it that is important. There are a range of contemporary literacies available to us - while print literacy was the first mass media, it is now one of the mass media."
"There are strong people who aren't able to climb. It's about reading the rock, knowing how to position your body and having the tenacity to not let go."
"From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood."
"I began writing books after speaking for several years and I realize that when you have a written book people think that you're smarter than you really are if I can joke. But it's interesting. People will buy your book and hire you without reading the book just because you have a book and you have a book on a subject that they think is of interest to themselves or e to their company."
"The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library."
"Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment.... The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium."
"Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul."
"Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing."
"Reading is performance. The reader--the child under the blanket with a flashlight, the woman at the kitchen table, the man at the library desk--performs the work. The performance is silent. The readers hear the sounds of the words and the beat of the sentences only in their inner ear. Silent drummers on noiseless drums. An amazing performance in an amazing theater."
"I love reading another reader’s list of favorites. Even when I find I do not share their tastes or predilections, I am provoked to compare, contrast, and contradict. It is a most healthy exercise, and one altogether fruitful."
"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me."
