Quotes About Why We Read

#1. Kelly Link's prose is conveyed in details so startling and fine that you work up a sweat just waiting for the next sentence to land. This is why we read, crave, need, can't live without short stories.

Tea Obreht

#2. I would never require anyone to read any book. That seems antithetical to why we read - which is to choose a book for our personal reasons. I always shudder when I'm told my books are on required reading lists.

Amy Tan

#3. I'm a Spinozist. I believe in reason. I think all the progress that we've made making this a better world have been because of reason and not religion. I think religion has been pulled along by reason and that's why we read The Bible now so differently, even believers.

Rebecca Goldstein

#4. Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.

Alberto Manguel

#5. I pulled word after word from my core, like silk for a spider's web, spinning a make-believe life. That's why we read fiction, isn't it? To remind us that whatever we suffer, we're not the only ones? - Minka (The Storyteller)

Jodi Picoult

#6. After all, that's why we read historical fiction-to be transported to another time, and to be astonished at ancient people's lives and traditions, just as they would probably be astonished at ours.

Michelle Moran

#7. And that's what I really love, is finding a script and fantasizing and going to a different world and kind of portraying a character that is interesting. Because other lives interest us, that's why we read magazines like 'People' and try and fascinate and drool over what other people are doing.

Alex Pettyfer

#8. That's why we read fiction, isn't it? To remind us that whatever we suffer, we're not the only ones?

Jodi Picoult

#9. Why do we read biography? Why do we choose to write it? Because we are human beings, programmed to be curious about other human beings, and to experience something of their lives. This has always been so - look at the Bible, crammed with biographies, very popular reading.

Claire Tomalin

#10. Brilliant. A very funny and concise explanation of why we men are as we are. If you are male, you should read it and then make your partner read it, so they will no longer hate you but pity you instead.

Harry Enfield

#11. But this is exactly why I read
and don't belong to a book group
because reading is the most individual thing there is. Why collectivize it? Didn't we have enough bad English teachers in school? Crowd sourcing and literature shouldn't mix.

Peter Orner

#12. Why do we smile? Why do we laugh? Why do we feel alone? Why are we sad and confused? Why do we read poetry? Why do we cry when we see a painting? Why is there a riot in the heart when we love? Why do we feel shame? What is that thing in the pit of your stomach called desire?

Benjamin Alire Saenz

#13. If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?

Franz Kafka

#14. Story always tells us more than the mere words, and that is why we love to write it, and to read it.

Madeleine L'Engle

#15. Crystal then read the red sticker out loud, "Dangerous, do not open." We both stared at each other for a moment. I was trying to figure out why a dumb book about power was dangerous

Dominic Tomasi

#16. It seems people don't read or listen. Our scholars and our media have been very outspoken. We were the first country in the world to hold a national public awareness campaign against extremism and terrorism. Why would we not want to fight an ideology whose objective is to kill us?

Adel Al-Jubeir

#17. Still, there's that faint glimmer of hope we feel when we sense, in other people, the same kind of attentiveness to life that we take comfort in. Why else would anyone watch Haneke films or read Sebald? The material is grim, but it's redeemed by the quality of the attention.

Teju Cole

#18. Reality's kind of a medium, maybe greater than paper. We all want life to have the same texture that we read about in novels.

Why The Lucky Stiff

#19. People write fiction in their minds all the time - every time we read a 'human interest' news story, or a true crime tale, we find ourselves fascinated because we're trying to understand why people behave the way they do, why they make the choices they do, how we become who we become.

Dan Chaon

#20. In another chapter I have told you how in the year 800 a German chieftain had become a Roman Emperor. Now in the year 1066 the grandson of a Norse pirate was recognised as King of England. Why should we ever read fairy stories, when the truth of history is so much more interesting and entertaining?

Hendrik Willem Van Loon

#21. Children's and YA books are about being brave and kind, about learning wisdom and love, about that journey into and through maturity that we all keep starting, and starting again, no matter how old we get. I think that's why so many adults read YA: we're never done coming of age.

Betsy Cornwell

#22. The creator of Sir John Falstaff, of Hamlet, and of Rosalind also makes me wish I could be more myself. But that, as I argue throughout this book, is why we should read, and why we should read only the best of what has been written.

Harold Bloom

#23. I grew up on a mixed diet of mass and class, and I still read that way. I hate it when people apologize for what they read. Some bestsellers aren't exactly literary. So what? They're fun and rip-roaring, Who instituted the book police and why do we have to answer them? Grrrrr!

Jennifer Donnelly

#24. I think we should sometimes read stories where everything's different from our world, don't you agree? There's nothing's like it for teaching us to wonder why trees are green and not red, and why we have five fingers rather than six.'
spoken by The Bluejay, aka Mo the Bookbinder, from 'Inkdeath

Cornelia Funke

#25. All I said to you, all i did for you, seems so silly to me now.

Tegan Quin

#26. I believe that we should only read those books that bite and sting us. If a book does not rouse us with a blow then why read it?

Franz Kafka

#27. He said, "Yefrem! Stop griping. Take this book and read it."
Yefrem stopped short, and looked at it dully.
"What for? Why read, when we'll all be dead soon?"
Ogloyed's scar twitched.
"That's exactly why you have to hurry, because you'll soon be dead.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#28. I recently read that Arnold Schwarzenegger collects Hummers. Now we know why Maria's face is frozen in that puckered position.

Brad Wilkerson

#29. I don't know why, but I always feel a kind of necessity to write things that are beyond acceptance, that are too offensive or something. For people to read them and say, Ha-ha-ha, very funny. No, we can't print that.

Terry Southern

#30. We tell each other stories to help each other live. That's why I read poetry. I read poetry to stay alive. That's why I went to poetry in the first place, that's why I stay with it, that's why I'll never leave it.

Marie Howe

#31. Richard Pryor had real sincere and vulnerable moments. Now it seems so cheesy if you stop your act and say, "This is why we have to help them kids. We've got to make sure them kids can read."

Moshe Kasher

#32. I've always enjoyed that kind of thing - thinking about the production of narrative and why it is that when we read a novel, we don't notice the fact that someone who might be very close-mouthed or tight-lipped is perfectly willing to tell us a story in 600 or 700 pages.

Matthew Tobin Anderson

#33. But we believe that the Octavo must be read to avert catastrophe - otherwise why did the Creator leave it behind?" "Perhaps He was just forgetful," suggested the astrologer.

Terry Pratchett

#34. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.

George R R Martin

#35. I'm a person that just likes to speak the truth, and I don't understand why in America it's such a big deal that we won't read the Koran and we won't look at history.

Pat Robertson

#36. What are books? They become our best friends, they enrich our lives, they allow us to escape, if only for a time, into another world, whatever the genre...

Colette Kebell

#37. Why read? Because we are given more than we are.

James V. Schall

#38. Nobody fights over the opinion of which book is better. So why do we fight over which religion is better, if they're all based on books? Let us read and learn from them all and unite in our differences and disagreements too.

Robin Sacredfire

#39. We live in times that are in many ways ambiguous. Maybe that's why kids want precision in what they read - they don't like that moral ambiguity.

Lois Lowry

#40. On July 4th, we renew our commitment to the American Idea-the belief that all men are created equal. We read the Declaration. We tell our kids the history. We remember those who died to protect our country. And along the way, we remind ourselves of why we love it.

Paul Ryan

#41. I have a problem with the strip that runs along the bottom of the news programs. Don't these idiots who run the news programs know we don't want to read? That's why we're watching TV.

Jerry Seinfeld

#42. They say we fear only what we don't understand. And, indeed, it's very hard to understand why doormen and ushers are so important, so arrogant, and so majestically impolite. When I read serious articles I feel exactly the same vague fear.

Anton Chekhov

#43. I think Alice Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child is one of the books read by nearly every therapist. Everyone's jaw drops when they read Miller's dead-on description of why we became therapists. (...) I wish more people were familiar with her work.

Ryan Howes

#44. She spun a hundred-eighty degrees at the end of the passageway, landed like an acrobat beside the drum hatch. "The reason. Why something would attack us even if we didn't have anything it wanted." I read it off her: "If it wasn't attacking at all. If it was defending itself.

Peter Watts

#45. If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

Franz Kafka

#46. What we read and why we do so defines us in a profound way. You are what you read, I suppose. Browsing through someone's library is like peeking into their DNA

Guillermo Del Toro

#47. Stories are meant to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.

Finley Peter Dunne

#48. At first I was glad for the help. My freshmen English class, "Mythology and Archetypal Experience," confounded me.
I didn't understand why we couldn't just read books without forcing contorted interpretations on then

Alison Bechdel

#49. You read about poor people having Botox go wrong and you think: 'Well, what the bloody hell were you doing?' Why would you inject yourself with poison? And why are we spending so much time looking at ourselves? I just don't get it.

Imelda Staunton

#50. Armies aren't very good about carrying libraries with them. I can't imagine why. We'd fight so much less if everyone would juste sit down and read

Cynthia Hand

#51. Eliminate the thinkers and you control the population. That's the real reason no one knows how to read and why we live in chaos

Dennis Foon

#52. Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.

Jeanette Winterson

#53. Many of us have read about and talked about forgiveness, and we understand intellectually why it might benefit us to let go of anger toward others. But we hold on anyway.

Debbie Ford

#54. Why is life a constant disappointment?'
'Because we read fiction,' Mia said, and Shelley nodded, knowing it was true.

Victoria Connelly

#55. That is why we need to come with you," Logan replied as if he read my mind. "You don't have to do everything alone, Rose." He placed his hand on top of mine which was resting on the table.

A few volts of electricity ran up my spine.

Claudia Caren

#56. For all the self-improvement books I had read, I still wasn't above shallow validation-seeking. None of us were. That's why we were in the game. Sex wasn't about getting our rocks off; it was about being accepted.

Neil Strauss

#57. Of course she's read it. Half of England has read it, which is why it's vulgar to quote it.' 'Half the world has read the Bible and we quote it.

Jennifer Bradbury

#58. I read this book once that said we meet the people we need to meet when we're ready for them. Maybe that's why we met. To try and help each other figure out who we are now.

Holly Jacobs

#59. Boring heroines are, in my opinion, the most common romance mistake. We loathe hanging out with women who define themselves purely through their relationships ... why would we want to read about them?

Sarah MacLean

#60. We wish we could offer you a creation myth, an exact reason why you are the way you are, why when you read this sentence, you will know it's about you.

David Levithan

#61. We knew Terry Brooks' work, but we hadn't read the Shannara books. So, they sent us the book to read and we just loved the story and the characters. We thought it would make a very compelling season of television. We were like, "Someone is going to make this. Why don't we do it?"

Miles Millar

#62. There is no evidence that dogs have the kind of complex emotional lives and value systems that we do. It's one reason why we love them so much, in fact. They are neither "good" nor "bad." They don't hold grudges, act in petty ways, or seek revenge. They read our moods, but not our minds.

Jon Katz

#63. I think I begin to see where everything fell apart. The books I read, jetsam to you. Junk. Why didn't we realize that ten years back?"
"Lots of things you don't notice when you're-" he slowed- "in love".

Ray Bradbury

#64. Why is it that our young kids all across America can solve the most complex problems in a video game involving executive decision making and analytical thinking, yet we accept the fact that they can't add or read?

Naveen Jain

#65. Imagine what our culture would be like if Americans sold ideas, words, and books with the same creativity we use to sell designer jeans, shampoo, and rock stars. Why, we might end up with people whos attention span for the printed word is longer than the time it takes to read a T-shirt.

Jim Trelease

#66. What we prefer to read is sort of like sexual preference, you like what you like. Most of the time you have no clue why.

Laurell K. Hamilton

#67. Funny how nobody talks on the tubes, isn't it? I rarely catch the tube myself, or lifts. Confined spaces, everybody shuts down. Why is that? Perhaps we think everybody on the tube is a potential psychopath or a drunk,so we close down and pretend to read a book or something.

John Hannah

#68. I write because, as wonderful as life is - and it is truly wonderful - it isn't enough. It does not, for example, contain dragons. I find this unsatisfactory. So I read. And I write.

Laini Taylor

#69. It would seem that not only is religion lacking in the schools - so is common sense. I wonder what a teacher is supposed to say if a kid asks about those four words on a dime - 'In God We Trust.' Or maybe that's why they aren't being taught how to read these days.

Ronald Reagan

#70. The Original Quote was:- THOSE WHO FORGET PAST MISTAKES ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT THEM... It was never (as other quotes read)- 'those who forget the past are doomed' - why would we forget the past, that quote makes no sense...

Mel Jones