Top 100 Readers And Reading Quotes
#1. Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That's a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn't read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that's creepy as hell.
Max Barry
#2. People have told me that they cannot put down 'If I Stay' after reading it, and readers have become very invested in the love story between Adam and Mia.
Gayle Forman
#3. I believe we should spend less time worrying about the quantity of books children read and more time introducing them to quality books that will turn them on to the joy of reading and turn them into lifelong readers.
James Patterson
#4. Readers have told me that their children have learned to read after years of struggle after starting to read Garfield's comic strip and many people who have moved to the United States have said that they, too, learned English by reading Garfield.
Jim Davis
#5. Only a true reader will understand how lovely it is to read a book on rainy days.
Nicholaa Spencer
#6. I meet a lot of readers who first encountered my work in school. And I can only assume there is another group who would run away very fast if they saw me coming, for exactly the same reason. Reading is individual, and not all tastes are alike.
Margaret Atwood
#7. Every book begins and ends with other people- the readers who suggest the book to us and encourage us to read it, the talented author who crafted each word, the fascinating individuals we meet inside the pages- and the readers we discuss and share the book with when we finish.
Donalyn Miller
#8. I get letters from readers who say that they have always hated reading, but somebody suggested one of my books, they actually finished the book and enjoyed it, and they're going on to read another book. I'm thrilled that they have figured out that reading is fun.
Caroline B. Cooney
#9. I recognize in [my readers] a specific form and individual property, which our predecessors called Pantagruelism, by means of which they never take anything the wrong way that they know to stem from good, honest and loyal hearts.
Francois Rabelais
#10. I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I've learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don't think of and take them to places I can't go.
Ann Brashares
#11. Paranormal fiction offers authors - and readers - the chance to answer the question, 'What if?' All the different ways that question can be answered make for extremely entertaining reading.
Jeaniene Frost
#12. This is every reader's catch-22: the more you read, the more you realize you haven't read; the more you yearn to read more, the more you understand that you have, in fact, read nothing. There is no way to finish, and perhaps that shouldn't be the goal.
Pamela Paul
#13. All writers begin as readers, and the ones worth reading continue life as more prolific readers than writers.
Thomas Swick
#14. The books and magazines streamed in. He could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. ... they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality.
Thomas Mann
#15. Note to goyim readers: not every Jew who grew up in Brooklyn was rich. And as long as I'm on it, here's another note: fuck you. That's all. Whether or not you assumed we were rich, if you're a goyim, fuck you. But keep reading, and tell your friends to buy the book.
Gilbert Gottfried
#16. A work survives its readers; after a hundred or two hundred years, it is read by new readers who impose on it new modes of reading and interpretation. The work survives because of these interpretations, which are, in fact, resurrections: without them, there would be no work.
Octavio Paz
#17. 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
#18. There are only two kinds of Wodehouse readers, those who adore him and those who have never read him.
Richard Usborne
#20. Those who write against vanity want the glory of having written well, and their readers the glory of reading well, and I who write this have the same desire, as perhaps those who read this have also.
Blaise Pascal
#21. Reading is like a bridge which fills the gap between the real world and the imaginations.
Aman Jassal
#22. Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.
Alberto Manguel
#23. Early readers assumed the Book of Mormon people ranged up and down North and South America from upstate New York to Chili. A close reading of the text reveals it cannot sustain such an expansive geography.
Richard Bushman
#24. Reading is a lot like fine dining ... Some readers prefer just the meat and potatoes; I enjoy a seven-course meal.
Carmen DeSousa
#25. Also bear in mind, when you're choosing your words and stringing them together, how they sound. This may seem absurd: readers read with their eyes. But in fact they hear what they are reading far more than you realize.
William Zinsser
#26. Without spending increasingly longer periods of time reading, they won't build endurance as readers, either. Students need time to read and time to be readers.
Donalyn Miller
#27. Reading is like magic--I think I've made my case. Without the gift of words, this world's a crazy place!
Denise Walter McConduit
#28. Master storytellers like Jeffrey Archer and Arthur Hailey use simple language. But they manage to grab the attention of the readers right from page one. I'll consider myself a good storyteller the day people believe it's OK to be late for work or postpone deadlines just to finish reading my book.
Ashwin Sanghi
#29. Cry while writing it, and readers will cry while reading it.
A.D. Posey
#30. Something significant, magical, and
inspiring happens with each word you read in the pages of a book. You explore new lands, meet new people, feel new emotions, and are no longer the same person you were one word prior to reading it.
Martha Sweeney
#31. I hope to be with you as a writer for a very long time, and I hope that you will enjoy reading my work, because readers are the highest form of life on this planet.
Guy Johnson
#32. We are all writers and readers as well as communicators with the need at times to please and satisfy ourselves with the clear and almost perfect thought.
Roger Angell
#33. Surely few if any readers have come across the sentence they are now reading, and someone who had by chance heard or seen it could not possibly remember such a fact.
Noam Chomsky
#34. Poets, on the face of it, have either got to be easier or to write their own notes; readers have either got to take more trouble over reading or cease to regard notes as pretentious and a sign of bad poetry
William Empson
#35. I'd like for the young people, and older ones, too, who don't count themselves as readers, to know the joy of reading and what it does to enrich your life in so many ways.
Katherine Paterson
#36. Minimalism is close to mediocrity and mindlessness, a way for the ungifted to have a literary career, and for readers who really hate literature to pretend to be reading something serious.
Paul West
#37. Goodreads: Find your next favourite book! Now the world's largest e-reading community can connect with the world's largest community of book lovers. Join over 20 million other readers and see what your friends are reading, share highlights and rate the books you read with Goodreads on Kindle.
Anonymous
#38. When reading a book, you are sold what some writer thought. When reading a newspaper, you are sold what someone did, and, what some advertiser made.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#39. Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.
Margaret Atwood
#40. I just finished reading 'Don't Drink...' in one day. This is a very important and very 'big' book. Bob has bared his soul's journey like no one I can think of, and it's a great story offering great hope at the same time. This book will resonate with intelligent, conscious readers everywhere.
Neville Williams
#41. Read different to think differently; world is already into rat race.
Aman Jassal
#42. Readers themselves, I think, contribute to a book. They add their own imaginations, and it is as though the writer only gave them something to work on, and they did the rest.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
#43. Exposing students to lots of books and positive reading experiences while building a network of other readers who support each other provides students with tools that last beyond the classroom setting.
Donalyn Miller
#44. I have a great deal of sympathy for reluctant readers because I was one. I would do anything to avoid reading. In my case, it wasn't until I was 13 and discovered the 'Lord of the Rings' that I learned to love reading.
Rick Riordan
#45. There are three classes of readers; some enjoy without judgment; others judge without enjoyment; and some there are who judge while they enjoy, and enjoy while they judge. The latter class reproduces the work of art on which it is engaged. Its numbers are very small.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#46. As actors you have this trait to imitate very easily. I don't want to imitate anything or limit myself of finding this creature, this woman because I'm looking at magazines and I'm reading comics, and I'm asking people that are avid readers of The Guardians.
Zoe Saldana
#47. I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours.
Virginia Woolf
#48. With the advancement in e-reading technology, I was curious if it were possible for readers to be able to hear the actual songs while reading the book. I contacted Amazon and discussed the idea with their Kindle team, and they were very enthusiastic about it.
Colleen Hoover
#49. Don't be afraid to write and share your story with the reading world! Find your courage! It is a fact that some will love it and some will hate it, but there will always be at least one reader who needed it and that's all that matters!
S.L. Morgan
#50. It's not even my job to educate, but what I do is try to facilitate by creating a book that works on different levels. I do want to entertain and bring some joy to the reading experience. If it holds a little kernel of knowledge that readers choose to explore, well, that's great.
Graeme Base
#51. 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
#52. The power of readers lies not in their ability to gather information, in their ordering and cataloguing capability, but in their gift to interpret, associate and transform their reading.
Alberto Manguel
#53. We reduce the effectiveness of reading interventions when we don't provide our lowest-performing students reading time and encouragement. Developing readers need more reading, not less.
Donalyn Miller
#54. To whom do books belong? The books we read and the books we write are both ours and not ours. They're also theirs.
Pamela Paul
#55. High school teachers who want to get reluctant readers turned around need to give the students some say in the reading list. Make it collaborative: The students will feel ownership, and everyone will dig in.
Dave Eggers
#56. One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books, though preparation is necessary to profitable reading; and the less reading is better than more;
book-struck men are of all readers least wise, however knowing or learned.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#57. As a man may be eating all day, and for want of digestion is never nourished, so these endless readers may cram themselves in vain with intellectual food.
Isaac Watts
#58. We as authors sign a pact with our readers; they'll go on reading because they trust us to play fair with them and deliver what we've promised.
Pamela Glass Kelly
#59. 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
#60. The BBC's aim, along with schools, libraries and literacy groups, to involve more people in reading groups is an exciting idea and one that I hope will keep readers all over the UK exploring and sharing the wonderful world of books.
Tessa Jowell
#61. Since you are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveler, I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism.
Henry David Thoreau
#62. Reading is first and foremost non-reading. Even in the case of the most passionate lifelong readers, the act of picking up and opening a book masks the countergesture that occurs at the same time: the involuntary act of *not* picking up and *not* opening all the other books in the universe.
Pierre Bayard
#63. I loathe people who say, 'I always read the ending of the book first.' That really irritates me, It's like someone coming to dinner, just opening the fridge and eating pudding, while you're standing there still working on the starter. It's not on.
J.K. Rowling
#64. Readers and viewers will differ about what's totally standalone, what's totally serially dependent, and what's merely enriched by reading/viewing in a particular order.
Edward M. Lerner
#65. Some people become passionate readers and fans of science fiction during childhood or adolescence. I picked up on SF somewhat later than that; my escape reading of choice during my youth was historical novels, and one of my favorite writers was Mary Renault.
Pamela Sargent
#66. Anyway - because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next - and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis - at any time of night or day.
Kurt Vonnegut
#67. My late husband and I started our sons off as readers at a very young age. Today, they are voracious readers.
Soraya Diase Coffelt
#68. But editors are still the world's readers. And thus the eyes of the world.
Betsy Lerner
#69. 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
#70. when you read once, you get the understanding ; when you read twice, you get the second understanding. Don't just read, read!
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#71. The people who encouraged me weren't necessarily writers or readers themselves. They were people who were just pleased to see me devote my life to reading and writing.
Pankaj Mishra
#72. Girls are the best readers in the world. Reading is really a way of kind of escaping so deeply into yourself and pursuing your own thoughts within the construct of a story.
Caitlin Flanagan
#73. Students will read if we give them the books, the time, and the enthusiastic encouragement to do so. If we make them wait for the one unit a year in which they are allowed to choose their own books and become readers, they may never read at all. To keep our students reading, we have to let them.
Donalyn Miller
#74. Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew about the world and about themselves.
Lloyd Alexander
#75. As historical texts become rich and conceptually dense, readers may slow down not because they fail to comprehend, but because the very act of comprehension demands that they stop to TALK with their texts. In plain English, they pretend to deliberate with others by talking to themselves.
Sam Wineburg
#76. Reading that pleases and profits, that together delights and instructs, has all that one should desire.
Jacques Amyot
#77. From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story.
Alberto Manguel
#78. Many readers fear that it would be disloyal to their commitment to stand apart and impersonally question what they are reading. Yet this is necessary whenever you read analytically.
Mortimer J. Adler
#80. Readers, professional or casual, are alert to passages in a book that illuminate what was previously shadowy and formless.
Maureen Corrigan
#81. 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
#82. Every writer is first a member of a community of readers, and the deepest purpose of reading and writing fiction is to sustain a sense of connectedness, to resist existential loneliness; and so a novel deserves a reader's attention only as long as the author sustains the reader's trust.
Jonathan Franzen
#83. While reading Kasparov's book How Life Imitates Chess on my Kindle, I idly clicked on "popular highlights" to see what passages other readers had found interesting - and wound up becoming fascinated by a section on chess strategy I'd only lightly skimmed myself.
Clive Thompson
#84. Is it not a pity when some stylistic subtlety is lost without trace by the reader's inattention?
David Richards
#85. I remember how a man once got in touch with me to tell me that he was so engrossed in my book that he had to take a day off from work just so that he could finish reading it. Such kind of responses from my readers is extremely endearing, and it keeps me going.
Ashwin Sanghi
#86. Reading is an activity of the imagination, and the imagination in question is not the writer's alone.
Thomas C. Foster
#87. Leaders are readers, disciples want to be taught and everyone has gifts within that need to be coached to excellence.
Wayde Goodall
#88. 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
#89. The pages of a book are given life only as they are opened
L.J. DeVet
#90. Providing students with the opportunity to choose their own books to read empowers and encourages them. It strengthens their self-confidence, rewards their interests, and promotes a positive attitude toward reading by valuing the reader and giving him or her a level of control. Readers without power
Donalyn Miller
#91. I think more people are going to continue reading YA as well as reading other books because they have learned that they can find books there which they will truly love: a teenage protagonist is close enough to adult so readers of whichever age can sympathise and empathise with them.
Sarah Rees Brennan
#92. Readers can read what they want and easily switch to other books, so we're seeing a lot of reading behaviors. Some verticals attract different usage than others. We can spot reading patterns.
Trip Adler
#93. Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
#94. For students of every ability and background, it is the simply miraculous act of reading a good book that turns them into readers. The job of adults who care about reading is to move heaven and earth to put that book into a child's hands.
Nancy Atwell
#95. Most non-readers are nothing but an agglomeration of third-hand opinion and blindly received wisdom.
Tom Bissell
#96. Statistically, if you're reading this sentence, you're an oddball. The average American spends three minutes a day reading a book. At this moment, you and I are engaged in an essentially antiquated interaction. Welcome, fellow Neanderthal!
Dick Meyer
#97. Now, I do say, "It's possible. You might be the first. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the odds are very much against you." All great poets have been great readers and the way to learn your craft in poetry is by reading other poetry and by letting it guide you.
Edward Hirsch
#98. When I work, I'm just translating the world around me in what seems to be straightforward terms. For my readers, this is sometimes a vision that's not familiar. But I'm not trying to manipulate reality. This is just what I see and hear.
Don DeLillo
#99. Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#100. Interest is never enough. If it doesn't haunt you, you'll never write it well. What haunts and obsesses you may, with luck and labour, interest your readers. What merely interests you is sure to bore them. (from Workbook)
Steven Heighton
