Top 100 Quotes About Reading Books And Writing
#1. For me, reading books and writing them are tied together. The words of other writers teach me and refresh me and inspire me.
Betsy Byars
#2. One of the saddest things about publishing is how quickly it ages what it touches. The frenzy involved in getting books on shelves, and in putting the word out that they're there, moves at a speed that is not the speed of writing, let alone of reading.
Walter Kirn
#3. I have lived in worlds beyond counting and countries as strange and wonderful as the dance of dust in sunbeams, because I have lived in books.
Garon Whited
#4. Like most-maybe all- writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books.
Francine Prose
#5. Since I was trying so hard to make books lead my life, I didn't want to read them and then just put them back on the shelf and say, "good book," as if I was patting a good dog. I wanted books to change me, and I wanted to write books that would change others.
Jack Gantos
#6. this art wasn't exactly a novelty for him, and he shyly observed that, having nowhere to go and nothing to do, nor friends to visit, nor any interest in reading books, he usually spent his nights at home, in his rented room, likewise writing.
Anonymous
#7. For (Levi) Grossman, no books feel more like home than C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, which provide the template for what he likes to read - and how he wants to write.
Joe Fassler
#8. Reading books is a way for you to communicate with and learn from the best thinkers that are writing today and that have ever lived.
Joshua Rogers
#9. For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.
Virginia Woolf
#10. I grew up reading comic books, pulp books, mystery and science fiction and fantasy. I'm a geek; I make no pretensions otherwise. It's the stuff that I love writing about. I like creating worlds.
David S.Goyer
#11. You should always have 2 books ... the one you're reading and the one you're writing.
Sterling W. Sill
#12. This is what books only aimed to do and never could. Give you the glint of someone else's sunrise, what living is really like, you get old and it hurts to bend your elbow; your friends start to die, you can't get fresh fruit in the shops.
Geoff Ryman
#13. You learn almost as much about a thinker from what he reads - in particular, what he likes and what he disdains - as from what he writes himself.
Rodney Ulyate
#14. One cannot be taught to write. One can only learn to write by writing - and reading. Reading good books written by real artists - until you understand why they are good.
Truman Capote
#15. Really important books to me are the classics. I try very hard to read them well - you know, especially once I got serious about writing. So, reading Tolstoy several times - 'War and Peace,' 'The Kreutzer Sonata' - all those were really important to me.
Karl Marlantes
#16. So many (too many) books are published every year, and it seems everyone is writing a book. Perhaps we should all be reading more and writing less!
Tracy Chevalier
#17. The pages of a book are given life only as they are opened
L.J. DeVet
#18. So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book's form hardened.
Annie Dillard
#19. It is that kind of thinking that is the problem; that movies, video games and the Internet, devices that simply amuse the imagination are more interesting than what a library stocks.
S.A. Tawks
#20. Our house has a library - it seemed better use of the space than as a dining room! - and I try to spend as much time in there as possible. There's nothing better while reading or writing than to be surrounded by books.
Adam Christopher
#21. Language spread its warm, absurd rays over all my adolescent thoughts, and I felt the way we all long to feel: moody, lonely, lovesick and explosive with the prospects of tomorrow.
Spencer Gordon
#22. A person can escape an ingrained pattern of mental incapacity or 'non compos mentis' ("no power of the mind") by reading, writing, thinking, and studying their environment for telling external determinates that will shape a journey of the mind, body, and soul.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#23. I love research. Sometimes I think writing novels is just an excuse to allow myself this leisurely time of getting to know a period and reading its books and watching its films. I see it as a real treat.
Sarah Waters
#24. You get to be a certain age and you start reading stuff about the age you are, and you think, what is wrong with these people who are writing these books? Do they not have necks?
Nora Ephron
#25. If you're a writer, your first duty, a duty you owe to yourself and your readers, and to your writing itself, is to become wonderful. To become the best writer you can possibly be.
Theodora Goss
#26. I grew up in a house full of books and parents who read, which led to me to reading from a very young age. And reading seemed to naturally progress to writing.
Garth Nix
#27. Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage.
Pat Conroy
#28. A good book will pull you in from the beginning and take you on a journey you'll never forget.
Lauren Hammond
#30. We have to tell the American public that they're missing the boat, that they have to get into writing and reading. Not only that, but books won't crash in the year 2000.
Patricia Schroeder
#31. Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.
Angela Carter
#32. Books are the safest and greatest mind-altering substances in the world. But be safe; don't read and drive.
H.E. Fairbanks
#33. My creative process involves reading books and magazines, writing outside, and moving around a lot. I like to pace around when I'm writing songs.
Judith Hill
#34. Fans always say they laughed and they cried while reading my books. And I tell them that I laughed and cried while writing them.
Simone Elkeles
#35. I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.
Arthur C. Clarke
#36. Truths are dangerous," he said.
"Then why are you writing them in a book?"
"To catch them between the pages," said Teddy, "and trap them before they disappear.
Kristin Cashore
#37. You enter a book as if you are setting out on a journey and, if it is a good book, you will be a different person when you reach the end.
Chloe Thurlow
#38. Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.
Lisa See
#39. I find great consolation in having a lot of poetry books around. I believe that writing poetry and reading it are deeply intertwined. I've always delighted in the company of the poets I've read.
Edward Hirsch
#40. I will always respect the beliefs of fellow Christians who aren't comfortable reading or writing explicit love scenes, but I believe romances are beautiful and spiritual books that celebrate the best of what love has to offer and mirror the love God has for his children.
Teresa Medeiros
#41. Every reader wants the same thing: to open the cover of a book and watch the words explode like fireworks off the page.
Kim Lehman
#42. Reading literature and engaging in writing breaks through the mental rigidity that experience and repetition breeds.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#43. He had no intention of writing. He loved reading, that was all. And he read books that he thought so far beyond anything that he himself could dream of achieving that any thought of writing instantly evaporated into the certainty of failure.
Niall Williams
#44. I wasn't inspired so much by a person as by reading many good books. I loved to write and I wondered if I might be able to write material that others would enjoy reading.
Peg Kehret
#45. I don't believe in writer's block. Who can function working seven days a week at at job. It's the same with writing. Take a break and let the words come to you. It rarely comes if you force it and if it does, you'll probably regret what you wrote down on paper.
Lillian R. Melendez
#46. Books are so strong, you can break their spines and they will still stand for eternity.
Donald J. Bingle
#47. I love reading epic fantasies and big fat books and so I really wanted to write one. I think you always write what you want to read.
Cassandra Clare
#49. Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.
Jules Renard 1890
#50. Being blind is the worst possible thing and asking me to read and write no more is torture.
Jessica E. Larsen
#51. 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.
J.K. Rowling
#52. Your understanding and interpretation of [a novel] is undoubtedly unique ... and that is the real beauty of the relationship that joins readers, books and writers together in a literary trinity - a bookish triumvirate.
Briar Kit Esme
#53. Writers: read books. Read good books. Read bad books. Learn what does and does not work.
Kira Hawke
#54. Bring on the controversy. I write real life. It's harsh and sometimes gritty, but it's real. Why should we tip toe around that?
Shandy L. Kurth
#56. To care about words, to have a stake in what is written, to believe in the power of books - this overwhelms the rest, and beside it one's life becomes very small.
Paul Auster
#57. Just write. That's my only tip. And read. I guess that's two.
Shannon Celebi
#58. I think that writing should be honest and simple, and it should say something about what it means to be a person. When God is good to us, we write in such a way that the act of reading becomes a pleasure to those who buy our books.
M.V. Carey
#59. I did have a child, and I was reading a lot of picture books to her, but at the same time writing a children's book was something that I'd been wanting to do for many years, pretty much since the start of my career.
Al Yankovic
#60. Your story must told.
Live a life legacy- written book or notes.
This will be there for many generations to know your rich experiences and knowledge.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#61. You talk books away," he said; "why don't you write one?" "I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal.
Oscar Wilde
#62. Reading and writing are solitary activities that increase a person's capacity for concentration, awareness, and conceptual thought as the person weaves immediate information with stored memories.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#63. I want to read every book that's written
hear every song that was sung
I want to gaze at every cloud
and hold the zing of each fruit on my tongue.
Sanober Khan
#64. Life is a book that someone else is reading - and you, a key character - hence the need for continual conflict and resolution. We can't have any boring books.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#65. 'Books had always been my best friends and all I wanted to do was lose myself in them, and better yet if the worlds and characters were of my own making.'
Fae Sutherland
#66. I love when I finish reading a chapter that I wrote and my cheeks hurt from smiling and all I can utter is, 'Wow.'
Richelle E. Goodrich
#67. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
J.D. Salinger
#68. For such a long time, when you're a writer, you really are just writing for yourself, and maybe a few friends. So it's really amazing when your book gets out there and more people are reading and responding to it. It really makes the world of the books feel real.
Cassandra Clare
#69. If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don't read big Tolkienesque fantasies - Tolkien didn't read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he read books on Finnish philology. Go and read outside of your comfort zone, go and learn stuff.
Neil Gaiman
#70. I love words. I crave descriptions that overwhelm my imagination with vivid detail. I dwell on phrases that make my heart thrum. I cherish expressions that pierce my emotions and force the tears to spill over. In essence, I long for a writer's soul sealed in ink on the page.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#71. When you juice books from a library you are taking the history and imagination that has accumulated over so many years there.
S.A. Tawks
#72. The best thing about being a writer is that 'work' is always something you love, plus usually accompanied by tea, coffee and cakes of some sort.
Jamie L. Harding
#73. I think the kind of unexpected I really love is when you open books and the actual way of writing is different and interesting. Like reading Virginia Woolf for the first time or Lawrence Durrell for the first time.
Lalla Ward
#74. When I read my writing, am amazed by what I have captured in a given moments.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#75. Books are a gateway to the extraordinary, a portal for the unfettered imagination and limitless creativity.
Diana Jane Heath
#76. The time comes in life when we have read enough. It's time to stop reading. It's time to lay down the books and write.
Albert Einstein
#77. I am forever an advocate of books, both the reading of them and the writing. There is something sacred to me in that community. Because writing
and reading
is a solitary business. And it's good to know I'm not alone.
Shannon Celebi
#78. And because the world is too big and time is too short and you only have one life to live, read!
A.A. Patawaran
#79. Without books, everything would have been crooked. Without books, the wisdom in books today would have been fairy and folk tales. Without books the whole truth about life would have been imaginations and a guessing game
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#80. Authors go on writing books, and so we go on reading them. It is a sad state of affairs.
Elizabeth Aston
#81. It's in my head now. It's a memory. No camera could have captured what I saw and felt.
S.A. Tawks
#82. I did not imagine anyone reading my rambling, ranting stories. I was writing for myself, trying to shape my life outside my terrors and helplessness, to make it visible and real in a tangible way, in the way other people's seemed real
the lives I had read about in books.
Dorothy Allison
#83. In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people
people who supposedly want to write
read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them.
Natalie Goldberg
#84. Perhaps reading and writing books is one of the last defences human dignity has left, because in the end they remind us of what God once reminded us before He too evaporated in this age of relentless humiliations - that we are more than ourselves; that we have souls.
Richard Flanagan
#85. When my father first took me to Ennis Library I went down among the shelves and felt company, not only the company of writers, but the readers too, because they had lifted and opened and read these books. The books were worn in a way they can only get worn by hands and eyes and minds
Niall Williams
#86. Read obsessively. It will make you a better human and a better writer.
Pittacus Lore
#87. I developed my own production company. I'm reading different books and writing, working on myself. I'm being focused on that, but also being focused on in front of the camera and balancing mommy life at the same time. I just want to continue to move forward.
Kyla Pratt
#88. Thoughts. Your imagination. The voices inside your head. They're all the same thing and spirit is what fuels it.
S.A. Tawks
#89. The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.
Vladimir Nabokov
#90. I guess I never grew up. I was still reading kids' books in high school and college. I was always interested in writing or illustrating children's books, and I started collecting out-of-print books when I was about 10 years old.
Michael Patrick Hearn
#91. Every story is a ride to some place and time other than here and now. Buried in an armchair, reclined on a couch, prostrate on your bed, or glued to your desk, you can go places and travel through time.
A.A. Patawaran
#92. When the writing is good, a book becomes a mirror. The reader will see an uncanny familiarity and respond accordingly.
Jen Knox
#93. I started writing while I was a little boy. Maybe it's because I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday. Also, my love for good writing pushed me.
Naguib Mahfouz
#94. I am interested in writing how women really feel, how they really think, and how they respond to men. I don't want men reading my books because they might find out too much.
Charlotte Lamb
#95. When I decided to take writing seriously, I did a lot of reading and analyzing of the books I liked, and came up with what I thought were pretty sound plotting and structure basics.
George Stephen
#96. ...there will always be books. ... Books are real objects. Books are friends. ... They're also ideas and emotions.
Stephen King
#97. As I read you I fell in love with the holes between your words and I loved you most on the days you could not love yourself.
Jenim Dibie
#98. I loved to read, still do, and it seemed that the writing was a result of the love of books and reading and libraries.
Adriana Trigiani
#99. Generations of devoted American history buffs have spent countless hours reading and writing long books about the American Revolution without ever having come across the name of Dr. Thomas Young. Yet it was Young who came up with the idea for the original tea party - the one in Boston Harbor.
Matthew Stewart
#100. I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.
Nick Earls
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