I’ve loved reading all my life.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.

I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.

For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

Yes, there is a terrible moral in ‚Dorian Gray‘ – a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

I’ve never known any trouble than an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.

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

I’m sure most parents read to their children to explain what certain things mean. So books are a good way to convey a message to anybody. Everybody reads.

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

How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

If anything, I get most upset because I wanna read a good paper first thing in the morning. And if I see a lie about myself flash across the front of the cover, I don’t think much of the rest of the newspaper.

A boy’s story is the best that is ever told.

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.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

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

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

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

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

I spend a lot of time reading.

If I’m honest I have to tell you I still read fairy-tales and I like them best of all.

I’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.

You can’t die with an unfinished book.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

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

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

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.

I think the definition of a book is changing.

The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours – and I think probably gave me many nightmares.

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

To describe my scarce leisure time in today’s terms, I always default to reading.

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.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

Let us read and let us dance – two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.

You cannot open a book without learning something.

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

By reading, you learn through others‘ experiences, generally, a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.

Honestly, 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.

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, ‚Nobody under 40,‘ or ‚Nobody under 25.‘ With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is ‚reader.‘

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.

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.