Top 100 Stories To Read Quotes
#1. Just as our ancient ancestors drew animals on cave walls and carved animals from wood and bone, we decorate our homes with animal prints and motifs, give our children stuffed animals to clutch, cartoon animals to watch, animal stories to read.
Diane Ackerman
#3. David Burnett was the son of Martha Foley, who edited the Best American Short Stories series. She hired me to work with David and her to read stories for the anthology.
Terry Southern
#4. We have all read tragic stories in our local papers about gun accidents as a result of misuse. As lawmakers we can better promote safety and responsibility by encouraging gun owners to purchase gun safes to store firearms and keep them from falling into the wrong hands.
Ron Lewis
#5. Detective stories keep alive a view of the world which ought to be true. Of course people read them for fun ... But underneath they feed a hunger for justice ... you offer to divert them, and you show them by stealth the orderly world in which we should all try to be living.
Dorothy L. Sayers
#6. Once I read a story about a butterfly in the subway, and today, I saw one. It got on at 42nd, and off at 59th, where, I assume it was going to Bloomingdales to buy a hat that will turn out to be a mistake - as almost all hats are.
Miklos Laszlo
#7. You will continue to read stories of crookedness and corruption - of policemen who lie and steal, doctors who reap where they do not sew, politicians on the take. Don't be misled. They are news because they are the exceptions.
Robert Fulghum
#8. He loved to read. He loved words, the way they string together into sentences and stories. He wanted to study them, to know and create them, to share them with the world.
Sarah Ockler
#9. I always run the stories by Capcom. They read the scripts and give their comments. I would never want to kill a character that they really want to use in the next game.
Paul W. S. Anderson
#10. Now that we can buy anything we want we seem to read detective stories.
Elizabeth Savage
#11. I tried to convey to the boy how people's lives are often altered by curved lines read slowly from paper, sand, or stone.
Simon Van Booy
#12. I have always loved to read, and now that I have penned 10 novels and a few magazine articles, I have fallen seriously in love with writing stories and seeing them go out into the world. It's magical, you know?
Dorothea Benton Frank
#13. I don't travel and tell stories, because that's not the way these days. But I write my books to be read aloud, and I think of myself in that oral tradition.
Louis L'Amour
#15. The reason I quit being a sales manager over twenty years now is because I hate elevator pitches. I want to write stories and show people what's in them when they read them, not tell them all about it ahead of time.
Kurt Busiek
#16. Digital-Original just shifts the R&D costs for publishing to the authors and affords us the chance to write the stories we want to write and the stories our patrons want to read.
Michael A. Stackpole
#17. The Bible is endlessly interesting because it is God's story, and God by nature is himself endlessly interesting. The Bible is an ever-flowing fountain. The more you read it, the more you find its truth and beauty to be inexhaustible.
D. A. Carson
#18. I think we begin to lose the ability to read in the deepest, most interpretive ways because were not kind of calming our mind and just focusing on the argument or the story.
Nicholas G. Carr
#19. Hey everyone. This is Elizabeth Stone, the one who wrote a A BOY I ONCE KNEW and BLACK SHEEP AND KISSING COUSINS. To those of you who read either one, thanks! But another Elizabeth Stone, not me, wrote WOMEN AND THE CUBAN REVOLUTION and VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. Just setting the record straight!
Elizabeth Stone
#20. Many fairy tales and ballads present us with animals who are nobler, truer, and kinder than the greedy human beings who desire to possess them. I guess I tend to read these stories as very early (and possibly unconscious) feminist texts.
Delia Sherman
#21. The whole Haley-Nathan marriage deal was a pretty good twist huh? I hope we got all of you with it. That particular story line even suprised me when I read it, it's a good one and it'll provide for some good stories to come.
James Lafferty
#22. I can't speak for readers in general, but personally I like to read stories behind which there is some truth, something real and above all, something emotional. I don't like to read essays on literature; I don't like to read critical or rational or impersonal or cold disquisitions on subjects.
Laura Esquivel
#23. Let memories of your own hometown flow back to you as you read this fascinating story, "A Place called Gouyave," about the author's recollection of the characters, stories and the lessons learnt in his hometown during his youth on the Caribbean island of Grenada.
Collis Decoteau
#24. Christy Barritt's novel, Hazardous Duty, is a delightful read from beginning to end. The story's fresh, engaging heroine with an unusual occupation hooked me, and I couldn't put it down. I highly recommend Hazardous Duty.
Colleen Coble
#25. I used to take my short stories to girls' homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?
Ray Bradbury
#26. I read a zombie story, and I have nightmares for days. But my youngest sister loves zombie stories. So when she insisted it was time for Bards and Sages to put together a zombie book, I couldn't tell her 'no.'
Julie Ann Dawson
#27. Stories are meant to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.
Finley Peter Dunne
#28. Readers tend to devour short stories on a newssheet, but would be disinclined to read them in collections
L.P. Hartley
#29. When you're working on a script, every word that's on the page, somebody has to read it. Make every word count in your stories.
Jonathan Demme
#30. Betsy liked to read her stories aloud and she read them like an actress. She made her voice low and thrillingly deep. She made it shake with emotion. She laughed mockingly and sobbed wildly when the occasion required.
Maud Hart Lovelace
#31. During the post-breakdown period, she read books the way an addict swallowed pills. She devoured stories one after the other, trying not to let reality intrude too deeply.
Susan Wiggs
#32. The more I know about God, I am convinced He likes to read books and authors are His librarians. Every soul is a story waiting to be read.
Shannon L. Alder
#33. Some people just need to read and think, to spend time alone sorting through the stories in their heads
Ronald T. Potter-Efron
#34. Why does it help to read others' stories? It is not only that misery loves company, because (I learned) misery is too self-absorbed to want much company. Others' experiences did help with my emotional struggle ...
David Sheff
#35. The library is full of stories of supposed triumphs which makes me very suspicious of it. It's misleading for people to read about great successes, since even for middle-class and upper-class white people, in my experience, failure is the norm
Kurt Vonnegut
#36. It wasn't until I started to read short stories - by people like Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, John Updike ... Eudora Welty - that I became excited about the possibilities of writing.
Carol Windley
#37. It's much easier to read the stories that have a lot of dialogue; of course, they flow much more easily into speech.
Deborah Eisenberg
#38. But the thing is that I'm in love with Rafael's story. I think I understand when Adam says that all our stories are different but in some ways our stories are all the same. I never really got that. But when I start to read Rafael's journal, it's as if I can see myself. It's better than a mirror.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#39. Often, when I am able to check out a book, I read it a dozen times before returning it, desperate to remain lost in the magic of someone else's story.
Amy Engel
#40. I remember when I was about 12, I read M. R. James' 'Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary' under the covers, way too young to fully understand what was going on with those stories - completely terrified but absolutely loved them.
Tom Goodman-Hill
#41. Sometimes hearing the stories is going to change people's lives much more than if they read it.
Sandra Cisneros
#42. 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
#43. When I read a story, I relive the moment from which it sprang. A scene burned itself into me, a building magnetized me, a mood orseason of Nature's penetrated me, history suddenly appeared to me in some tiny act, or a face had begun to haunt me before I glanced at it.
Elizabeth Bowen
#44. The attraction of reading is that it allows you to live, for a few hours, as someone else - grants you access to their head, their thoughts, their secrets.
Alessandra Torre
#45. I love Sherlock Holmes, but I love any of these old stories where the writer was paid by the word, so the adventures just continue forever. They are almost like they were meant to be read out loud.
Biz Stone
#46. I loved stories as a kid, both being read to me and enjoying on my own. All these stories inspired my imagination, and that's what I have always aimed at doing for my readers: ignite their imaginations.
Tony DiTerlizzi
#47. So, short stories have an even harder time, because they tend to get read during the day, between other things. They're interstitial. And yet the content of short stories tends to be very much "nighttime" content.
Lorin Stein
#48. Pictures are very important. I remember at home we had illustrated editions of Rudyard Kipling's 'Just So Stories' and 'The Jungle Book,' which were read to me. Living in Zimbabwe made it very real, especially the 'Just So Stories' with the 'great grey-green greasy Limpopo.'
Korky Paul
#49. I write stories, because I want to read them.
A.E. Croft
#50. I'm not trying to spell out a story. I still think you feel the painting, and the reason you read the mark is because you also feel the mark.
Julie Mehretu
#51. I don't know where my romanticism comes from. My mom and dad would read to me a lot. 'Treasure Island,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' tales of chivalry and knights, things like that. Those are the stories I loved growing up.
Daniel Radcliffe
#52. Yes, I receive fan mail. One of my favorite things to do is sit down and read the letters people write. It's really amazing the time people take to write these letters, tell their stories, draw pictures, etc.
Marisa Miller
#53. Who wants to read about success? It is the early struggle which makes a good story.
Katherine Anne Porter
#54. When I was very little my mother would read to me in bed. She gave me a fascination for stories, and for the music in words.
Michael Morpurgo
#55. If you just write the kinds of stories you think others will want to read, you'll be competing with cartoonists who are far more enthusiastic for that kind of comic than you are, and they'll kick your ass every time.
Scott McCloud
#56. Whenever I'm asked what advice I have for young writers, I always say that the first thing is to read, and to read a lot. The second thing is to write. And the third thing, which I think is absolutely vital, is to tell stories and listen closely to the stories you're being told.
John Green
#57. What are you reading?" she asked as he poured himself scotch and her a vodka. She looked over to the deserted volume. "Stories and Legends of Pagan Russia," she read aloud. "Are you catching up on Yvan's biography?
Amy Kuivalainen
#58. I've always loved comic books. As a kid, I used to read cowboy stories and historical comics about other worlds, unknown places that would take me out of myself and which helped to develop my imagination.
James Herbert
#59. The books of our childhood offer a vivid door to our own pasts, and not necessarily for the stories we read there, but for the memories of where we were and who we were when we were reading them; to remember a book is to remember the child who read that book.
Lewis Buzbee
#60. From what I've read of detective stories, inspectors always do want to drag the pond first.
A.A. Milne
#61. You know," Rolf said, "you read stories when you're little, and you think it would be so amazing to have adventures happen to you. Then you actually go on one, and find out that it's awful. Nothing but bad food, sleeping cold on the hard ground, and treachery.
Jessica Day George
#62. Christmas was always a big holiday in our family. Every Christmas Eve before we'd go to bed, my mom and dad would read to us two or three stories and they would always be 'The Happy Prince,' 'The Gift of the Magi' and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas,' and I would like to keep that alive.
Cameron Mathison
#63. Real luxury is having the time to read endless stories in bed with my children. And I get that all the time. I'm so blessed.
Kate Winslet
#64. I wanted to write at school - to write funny stories which the teacher might ask me to read out to the class. It's all basically about showing off.
Mark Billingham
#65. Those who fail to reread are obliged to read the same story everywhere.
Roland Barthes
#66. As I walk back to the school on my own, I realise I'm crying. So I go back to the stories I've read about the five and I try to make sense of their lives because in making sense of theirs, I may understand mine.
Melina Marchetta
#67. I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's something for research.
Richard Dawkins
#68. Deirdre Maddon has an extraordinary, almost celestial way of telling a story. There are so many great writers now - although I also want to go back and read all of Dickens again.
Rebecca Miller
#69. A good story's like a door, and you can go through it whenever you need to. After you've read it or seen it or heard it, you can still go back through it. Once it's yours, it's always yours.
Nora Roberts
#70. She wanted to read and talk and laugh and watch television and listen to the radio. She wanted to watch the world around her go by, and make up stories in her head about everything she saw...Like a princess in a carriage, surveying her kingdom, preferably one with a magical forest.
Jami Attenberg
#71. I read more than I had in years-novels, short stories, three long nonfiction books about how we had stumbled into the Iraq mess (the short answer appeared to have W for a middle initial and a dick for a Vice President).
Stephen King
#72. When my mom was alive, she read me stories every night. "Use your imagination, Lorelei," she'd say, "and your whole life can be a fairy tale." I wanted that to be true. But I should have paid more attention to the fairy tales.
Nikki Loftin
#73. To be able to make up stories has been a great gift to me from my ancestors and from the storytellers who were so numerous at Laguna Pueblo when I was growing up. I learned to read as soon as I could because I wanted stories without having to depend on adults to tell or read stories to me.
Leslie Marmon Silko
#74. Essentially, I never know what I'm going to do until I read the script, but a good story is a good story. I would like to do more modern stuff, but ultimately, it doesn't matter to me - good stories are timeless.
Rupert Evans
#75. It was like that kid had been born knowing how to read. He was only in the second grade but he loved to read stories by himself - and he never asked anybody else to read to him.
Carson McCullers
#76. I raise an eyebrow, working to achieve the right tone of intellectual superiority. If you've never read the Twilight books or the Hunger Games series you wouldn't understand. Not. One. Bit. They are complex stories. Big words. Probably beyond you.
Anne Eliot
#77. I read a lot of autobiographical stories, and I write plays and prose. And I play piano and cello. A lot of my downtime is devoted to that.
Alexis Dziena
#78. people who read short stories love endings that make them want to gargle with Drano or nosedive off a skyscraper. But
Benjamin Percy
#79. In the best stories, people are morally complex; they are flawed. We read them because the world is flawed, and we want to see it truthfully represented. And because it can be thrilling to be shocked and upset, and even to feel, for chilling moments, what it's like to be a bad person.
Russell Smith
#80. For the past few years my fans have made it very clear that they would like to read my novels and revisit my family of characters faster than I can write them. For them, I am willing to make a change to my working methods so the stories in my head can reach the page more frequently.
Wilbur Smith
#81. Fairytales work on two levels. On a conscious level, they are stories of true love and triumph and overcoming difficult odds and so are pleasurable to read. But they work on a deeper and symbolic level in that they play out our universal psychological dramas and hidden desires and fears.
Kate Forsyth
#82. I still think that of all the people doing top fiction today, John D. MacDonald is the best.He was my model as a kid. If there are people out there that want to write, all you need to do is read 20 of his stories to get an idea what it takes to make a story kick over.
Stephen King
#83. All of us have read the stories about young people in Hollywood and all the challenges they have to confront there, and I think that artistically, I really didn't understand the commercial side of the film business, so I went back to a purely artistic setting.
Marisa Tomei
#84. I started writing little short stories and poems as soon as I learned to read and write. I think I was six years old. And then when I got to be eleven, twelve, and into my teens, I was just listening to records all the time, and I got a guitar. I started to take guitar lessons when I was twelve.
Lucinda Williams
#85. I hate it when something I've had published "inspires" some nut to imitate what I've written, or some teacher gets fired for having her students read one of my stories or novels.
Richard Matheson
#86. When we, as young women, are given the space to read, the act becomes a happy, private corner we can return to for the rest of our lives. We develop this love of reading by turning to stories that speak to the most special, secret parts of us.
Lena Dunham
#87. I think the reason I'm a writer is because first, I was a reader. I loved to read. I read a lot of adventure stories and mystery books, and I have wonderful memories of my mom reading picture books aloud to me. I learned that words are powerful.
Andrew Clements
#88. I am drawn to writing books about magic and the supernatural because those are the types of books I like to read. I've written many short stories with realistic settings, and I certainly wouldn't rule out realistic novels in the future!
Cassandra Clare
#89. There are only so many stories in the world ... Duplication of plots is bound to happen because most writers have read very extensively in their genre and have become aware they are adding an extra layer to the meta-narrative, finding a new spin on the original.
Kerry Greenwood
#90. My process for determining which eras I'd write about was to just read history books that gave a really broad overview of Chinese history. And when I came across a historical figure or a historical incident that was especially interesting to me, ideas for characters and stories would surface.
Susan Barker
#91. Reasons were invented, and stories were reasons that allowed us to connect ourselves to the world, to compose ourselves in ways that others could read. Fragments were true but we needed stories greater than fragments. We needed stories in order to imagine the mad world we lived in.
Bilal Tanweer
#92. I wanted to write stories I wanted to read, that I and my friends related to.
Jane Green
#93. The Compleat Angler is acknowledged to be one of the world's books. Only the trouble is that the world doesn't read its books, it borrows a detective story instead.
Stephen Leacock
#94. Some of what we read in classical literature is not relative to our condition, but then many women novelists and poets have turned it upside down and told the stories from the other point of view.
Margaret Drabble
#95. It is not weird for a dad to be doing the dishes, the laundry, and taking the kids to school, and read them stories for bed.
Zach Cregger
#96. Adult stories never made sense, and they were so slow to start. They made me feel like there were secrets, Masonic, mythic secrets, to adulthood. Why didn't adults want to read about Narnia, about secret islands and smugglers and dangerous fairies?
Neil Gaiman
#97. I like to write stories that read like historical fiction about great, world-changing events through the lens of a flawed protagonist.
Carol Berg
#98. How cruel that mankind was forced to conform to the global electronic experience. But all other options had vanished. There no longer existed a country to escape to ("country" - also, what a quaint notion) where people read books and had lives that became stories.
Douglas Coupland
#99. 'You're there, but the books draw you in to whole other worlds. I mean, I know you study more serious things than the silly stories I read, but when you're there, you can be anywhere. It fascinates me.'
Caethes Faron
#100. Probably every book I read influenced me in some small way. Authors like Jan Westcott, Kathleen Winsor, Catherine Cookson, Georgette Heyer, and even Barbara Cartland taught me to write character-driven stories.
Virginia Henley
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
