There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.
Terry PratchettDon Quixote’s misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.
Franz KafkaI don’t know if I officially proofread my father’s book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.
Noam ChomskyIn books lies the soul of the whole past time.
Thomas CarlyleThis is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.
Virginia WoolfThere is creative reading as well as creative writing.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.
Marcus Tullius CiceroReading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
Joseph AddisonWell, if Fortune be a woman, she’s a good wench for this gear.
William ShakespeareFor a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.
Maya AngelouI read to my kid, but I can’t stand reading.
Adam SandlerIf I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.
Anne FrankUntil I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
Harper LeeI don’t understand what it’s all about or what’s worth what, but if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that x, y or z wins the Nobel Prize, then so be it.
Richard P. FeynmanTo read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Edmund BurkeStay active. Read the Word. Worship with other believers. Continue to give. Keep learning and growing. Your faith will be unleashed!
Joyce MeyerI hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.
Jean-Jacques RousseauI have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.
George EliotI was a chemistry major, but I’m always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I’ve brought scientific thinking to literature. There’s been very little gratitude for this.
Kurt VonnegutThe myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.
Margaret AtwoodSadly, I do my homework. I’ve a soft spot for the boring minutiae. I read the Charter of the United Nations before meeting with Kofi Annan. I read the Meltzer report, and then I’ll read C. Fred Bergsten’s defense of institutions like the World Bank and the I.M.F. It’s embarrassing to admit.
BonoWhen you’re young, you keep reading new writers and you keep changing your mind about how you ought to sound.
Paul AusterNo book includes the entire world. It’s limited. And so it doesn’t seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There’s so much other material to write about.
Paul AusterEvery now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.
J. K. Rowling‚Discworld‘ is taking something that you know is ridiculous and treating it as if it is serious, to see if something interesting happens when you do so.
Terry PratchettThe tablet is not mainstream. Reading off the screen is not mainstream.
Bill GatesI can’t tell you the number of times I looked down at what was going on on the ground, or I was engaged in a fight somewhere, and I knew within a couple of minutes how I was going to screw up the enemy. And I knew it because I’d done so much reading.
Jim MattisTo a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
Henry David ThoreauIt is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. Of old they spoke the languages of Men, after their own fashion, and liked and disliked much the same things as Men did. But what exactly our relationship is can no longer be discovered.
J. R. R. TolkienHow well he’s read, to reason against reading!
William ShakespeareAfter you finish a book, you know, you’re dead. But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.
Ernest HemingwayOnce upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.
Margaret AtwoodMy favourite poem is the one that starts ‚Thirty days hath September‘ because it actually tells you something.
Groucho MarxO Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.
Ralph Waldo EmersonPoliticians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
Arthur C. ClarkeI’ve only wanted paper and beautiful colors. It was my dream, and it still is my dream. And books. They’re all I need, and the rest I can do without.
Karl LagerfeldThe first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.
Huey NewtonThe moment I said I’d finished a book, I knew what would happen. There would be a bidding war, and I would end up with someone who’d got the fattest wallet, who had bought it because I’d written Harry Potter. That would have been why.
J. K. RowlingThe more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That’s one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living.
Will RogersReading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which many believe goes hand in hand with it – will be dead as well.
Margaret AtwoodHow long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?
John RuskinMum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about ‚Wind in the Willows‘ and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought – you know about ‚The Wind in the Willows.‘
Terry PratchettI love great journalism. I appreciate it. I love a good, you know, I love good news stories. I love great books. I love great articles. I appreciate them so much, and they’ve been part of my education as a woman.
Angelina JolieI spend a lot of time reading.
Bill GatesThe problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.
Dr. SeussI like to read books. I like to listen to music.
Haruki MurakamiA good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I’ll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I’m crepuscular.
Christopher HitchensO! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!
William ShakespeareA man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Samuel JohnsonIt was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
James BaldwinIf you can’t read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!
Mr. THonestly, I think we should be delighted people still want to read, be it on a Kindle or a Nook or whatever the latest device is.
J. K. RowlingI’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.
Tom BradyThe first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.
Dylan ThomasParadise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.
Samuel JohnsonI haven’t read Horowitz. I didn’t used to read him when he was a Stalinist, and I don’t read him today.
Noam ChomskyI read poetry to save time.
Marilyn MonroeI think when people mean that Discworld books have become darker they really mean the series is growing up. In ‚The Colour of Magic‘ most of the city is set alight. It’s a joke, in much the same way that the Earth is destroyed almost at the start of Douglas Adams’s ‚The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.‘
Terry PratchettI’m always reading the next book. Taking notes. Highlighting, researching, studying. It doesn’t stop.
Jocko WillinkI learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.
Margaret Atwood