I’m tall, fat, rather bald, red-faced, double-chinned, black-haired, have a deep voice, and wear glasses for reading.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‚the book lady.‘ The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the ‚book lady‘ title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I’ve done something good with my life and with my success.

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.

All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.

I haven’t read Horowitz. I didn’t used to read him when he was a Stalinist, and I don’t read him today.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

I think the definition of a book is changing.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

It’s very difficult to read a book on your computer.

The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.

I’m always trying. Between every book, I think, ‚Well now, it’s time to get down to the serious stuff.‘

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

I can’t think without my glasses.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

I think the reason I don’t read is because, when I’m reading, I feel like I’m missing out on something else. You know, What are my friends doing? Where’s my girlfriend?

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television – there wasn’t a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.

Just be a cool grandpa who’s creative, and hang out and tell stories and read a book in the library.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bible, is musical, just wonderful. I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

The 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.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

As for hobbies, I don’t really read or watch TV.

I read a lot when I’m travelling and always have a couple of books on the go.

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

You stay teachable most by reading books. By reading what other people went through.

‚Mystic River‘ just smelled interesting to me. So I read it and liked it right away. Even the dialogue in it was great.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

Libraries raised me.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they’re just infested with lots of stuff.

Mum 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.‘

A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.

I am not a fan of books.

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.

You cannot open a book without learning something.

I read a lot. I enjoy reading a lot.

For 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.

The proper study of mankind is books.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

I’ve done auditions where the casting director is taking the paper out of my hand in the middle of reading.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

If the government ever imposes a tax on books – and I wouldn’t put it past them – I’m in dead trouble.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.