What was a book? Not just ink and fiber and stitchery: a series of processes. To a wizard, it was not a static object–but a human thought caught and bound, made concrete through sacred technology....

My father never put a book into my hands and never forbade a book. Instead, he let me roam and graze, making my own more or less appropriate selections. I read gory tales of historic...

She had forced herself to learn to read – picked up bits and pieces, here and there, from the very few teachers who had been patient with her; from looking at words while out and...

The progress of the friendship between Catherine and Isabella was quick as its beginning had been warm…and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of...

There is something wonderful about a book. We can pick it up. We can heft it. We can read it. We can set it down. We can think of what we have read. It does...

In his library he had been always sure of leisure and tranquility; and though prepared, as he told Elizabeth, to meet with folly and conceit in every other room in the house, he was used...

Can you think of a better way to tell?

Our library isn’t very extensive,” said Anne, “but every book in it is a friend. We’ve picked our books up through the years, here and there, never buying one until we had first read it...

It’s very difficult for a black man to get out of South-Central Los Angeles, and get out civilized….The only men I know who have escaped, all began reading Robert Heinlein at age ten.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Discovery a good book is like finding a great treasure.

If you write without reading, you will certainly have too many books without readers.

My first addiction was to books. -B. Chelsea Adams

Keep anyone with whom you can read in silence.

He read because it gave him instant gratification in a way nothing else did,and as was the case with all addicts,gratification was the important thing.

Once I finished reading a good book, it gives me a hard time coping up with reality.

I don’t mind nothing happening in a book, but nothing happening in a phony way–characters saying things people never say, doing jobs that don’t fit, the whole works–is simply asking too much of a reader....

Love for books,love for wisdom.

In reading we must become creators.

Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us.

I shall keep my book on the table here, and read a little every morning as soon as I wake, for I know it will do me good, and help me through the day.

If you’ve ever read one of those articles that asks notable people to list their favorite books, you may have been impressed or daunted to see them pick Proust or Thomas Mann or James Joyce....

Authors: The only people you thank for leaving you emotionally devastated.

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favorite book.

From the cave to the skyscraper, from the club to weapons of mass destruction, from the tautological life of the tribe to the era of globalization, the fictions of literature have multiplied human experiences, preventing...

Why does everyone think a girl who prefers books to people must be in want of a life?

A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of...

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer – he steps forth like a...

We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.

Language is a door. Words en-trance and are an entrance; they draw you in. When you read, the book you cradle disappears and the tales within unfold in your mind. Writing is a shelter of...

You should never read just for “enjoyment.” Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends’ insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick “hard books.” Ones you have to concentrate...

It takes a great reader to make a great book.

My little circle of friends know how twisted my brain is. I’m constantly reading and people always think, ‘Ah, we didn’t know that about you’, but that’s part of my charm.

There is only one genre in fiction, the genre is called book.

It is better to read one intellectually challenging book every 12 months … than to read 12 entertaining books every month.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

You get a little moody sometimes but I think that’s because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.

I was a hugely unchaperoned reader, and I would wander into my local public library and there sat the world, waiting for me to look at it, to find out about it, to discover who...

Reading, for me, is like this: consumptive, pleasing, calming, as much as edifying. It’s how I feel after a good dinner. That’s why I do it so often: It feels wonderful. The book is mind...

I regained my soul through literature after those times I’d lost it to wild-eyed gypsy girls on the European streets.

Books,’ I say sleepily. ‘They don’t change either. If you read a book and look at it again later on, it’s still the same thing. But it’s exciting all over again.

Libraries raised me.

The unification of worlds is an author’s priority, as one of them surely resides forbidden to the public.

When a new book is published, read an old one.

Montesquieu wrote: “I have never known any distress that an hour of reading did not relieve.” If one substituted the word music for reading, the exact same dictum applied to me.

Being a reader has brought me much joy, laughter, and rich experience. But reading has also wounded me. The sacrament of reading has plowed me open and sown seeds of empathy that have taken root...

In our land of opportunities and distractions, it’s hard to devote our attention to the quiet pleasures of reading. It’s as if we live our lives in a noisy restaurant and can’t have the intimate...

The music of revelation announces itself to the reader in somber brooding tones or in melodies light as air and one is invited to dance with the most captivating of partners: poetry.

That’s what sofas are for: sit down, drink a cup of tea, talk of literature. At least that’s how I see it.

Oh, magic hour when a child first knows it can read printed words! For quite a while, Francie had been spelling out letters, sounding them and then putting the sounds together to mean a word....