Reading quotes
6.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside reading — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Today I realize that many recent exercises in "deconstructive reading" read as if inspired by my parody. This is parody's mission: it must never be afraid of going too far. If its aim is true, it simply heralds what others will later produce, unblushing, with impassive and assertive gravity."
"I am an old consumer of papers. I cannot avoid reading my newspapers every morning."
"There are very real differences between science fiction and realistic fiction, between horror and fantasy, between romance and mystery. Differences in writing them, in reading them, in criticizing them. Vive les différences! They're what gives each genre its singular flavor and savor, its particular interest for the reader - and the writer."
"I was reading some complex books in my own youth-and no, I didnt always understand every word, let alone every concept-but I got the main thrust, which was like a lifeline in a fluctuating world."
"The best pastimes for a true enjoyer of leisure who has to stay at home . . .: reading by the fireside. . . . Listening to music."
"What thought or message would you put in a fortune cookie? "Stop reading this. Eat the cookie and live your life."
"Seeing people who are actually reading your book and listening to the wide variety of reactions they have to it, is really special."
"If you actually succeed in creating a utopia, you've created a world without conflict, in which everything is perfect. And if there's no conflict, there are no stories worth telling - or reading!"
"If I don't like someone and I start reading their stuff, it seems like my brain will just automatically start criticizing everything that's there. It's really hard to read a book without having all this outside information telling you what to think about it."
"I like reading books where people with a lot of money use it to do whatever they want. Like stay in expensive hotels and do whatever drugs they want and fly wherever they want."
"The U.S. is telling the Northern Alliance to kill Taliban prisoners. It's totally a breach of all the known conventions of war. Western television networks aren't showing this, but Arab networks are showing how prisoners are being killed and what's being done to them. Instead, we're shown scenes that are deliberately created for the Western media: a few women without the veil, a woman reading the news on Kabul television, and 150 people cheering."
"There are quite a number of people in the reading-room; but one is not aware of them. They are inside the books. They move, sometimes, within the pages like sleepers turning over between two dreams. Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading."
"This book should be read as one would read the book of a dead man."
"The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that's powerful."
"There's so much about Dolly Parton that every female artist should look to, whether it's reading her quotes or reading her interviews or going to one of her live shows. She's been such an amazing example to every female songwriter out there."
"Listening to my songs is like reading my diary."
"I stopped reading articles about myself. Even if it's not bad, I think actively caring about people's daily perception of you makes you second-guess everything. I am very happily not paranoid right now."
"An imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, when we arrive atthe precise sense of the author. I think nothing is of any value in books, excepting the transcendental and extraordinary."
"Every word we speak is million-faced or convertible to an indefinite number of applications. If it were not so we could read no book. Your remark would only fit your case, not mine."
"We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise."
