! QUOTES ON READING ! ! Reading gives us some place to go when we have to stay where we are. ! —Mason Cooley The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. ! --Mark Twain Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. ! —Joseph Addison Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multi- ply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting. ! --Aldous Huxley I am a part of all that I have read. ! --John Kieran Half of today’s teenagers don’t read books—except when they’re made to. ! --Niall Ferguson, 2011 No subject of study is more important than reading...all other intellectual powers depend on it. ! --Jacques Barzun Common sense should tell us that reading is the ultimate weapon—destroying igno- rance, poverty and despair before they can destroy us. A nation that doesn’t read much doesn’t know much. And a nation that doesn’t know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box and the voting booth....The challenge, therefore, is to convince future generations of children that carrying a book is more rewarding than carrying guns. ! --Jim Trelease The state of literacy in the United States today is declining so precipitously, while video and computer technologies are becoming so powerful that the act of reading itself may well be on the way to obsolescence. --Janet E. Healy ! - !1 - ! I took a speed reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It’s about Russia. ! --Woody Allen I used to take out seven books at a time from the library and sit in the kitchen, with my feet in the oven, eating cookies and reading trash. I think trash is a very impor- tant part of youth reading. It acts like mulch and helps fertilize the brain and al- lows creative ideas to germinate and grow. ! --S. J. Perelman The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, some- one even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours. ! —Alan Bennett If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book. ! —J. K. Rowling The art of reading is in great part that of acquiring a better understanding of life from one’s encounter with it in a book. ! --Andre Maurois How can you be bored? There are so many books to read! ! —Lailah Gifty Akita The people who do not have time to read books because they are watching television would, in the pre-TV era, not have had time to read books because they were dri- ving over to see Cousin Nellie or were going to the movies or were building a model railroad. --Granville Hicks I was able to place my own concerns aside and curl myself up in the cocoon of some- body else’s imagination. My life was suspended - I was in neither one place nor the other. ! —Kate Kerrigan People shock me when they say they never read. When I was young, if people didn’t read they would never admit it. Now, it’s quite acceptable to be anti-intellectual. —Joan Vass ! - !2 - ! I read books in the library, huddling on a bean bag in a corner and getting lost in somebody else’s victories and troubles. I never had much time for fiction before. I preferred real life. Mathematics. Solutions. Things that actually have a bearing on my life. But I can understand now why people read, why they like to get lost in somebody else’s life. Sometimes I’ll read a sentence and it will make me sit up, jolt me, because it is something that I have recently felt but never said out loud. I want to reach into the page and tell the characters that I understand them, that they are not alone, that I’m not alone, that it’s okay to feel like this. And then the lunch bell rings the book closes and I’m plunged back into reality. ! —Cecelia Ahern As many as six out of ten American adults have never read a book of any kind, and the bulletins from the nation’s educational frontiers read like the casualty reports from a lost war. ! —Lewis H. Lapham People don’t read any more. It’s a sad state of affairs. Reading’s the only thing that allows you to use your imagination. When you watch films it’s someone else’s vision, isn’t it? ! —Lemmy Kilmister The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at mid- night by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder. ! —Virginia Woolf My daughter is seven, and some of the other second-grade parents complain that their children don’t read for pleasure. When I visit their homes, the children’s rooms are crammed with expensive books, but the parent’s rooms are empty. Those chil- dren do not see their parents reading, as I did every day of my childhood. By con- trast, when I walk into an apartment with books on the shelves, books on the bed- side tables, books on the floor, and books on the toilet tank, then I know what I would see if I opened the door that says ‘PRIVATE--GROWNUPS KEEP OUT’: a child sprawled on the bed, reading. ! —Anne Fadiman No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or sur- render yourself to self-chosen ignorance. ! —Confucius ! - !3 - Fact 1: Reading can make you a better conversationalist. Fact 2: Neighbours will never complain that you are reading too loud. Fact 3: Knowledge by osmosis has to yet been perfected, so you’d better read. Fact 4: Books have stopped bullets. Reading could save your life. Fact 5: Dinosaurs did not read.Look what happened to them. ! —fandomlife-universe I read where I can, but I have a favorite place and probably you do, too—a place where the light is good and the vibe is usually strong. For me it’s the blue chair in my study. For you it might be the couch on the sunporch, the rocker in the kitchen, or maybe it’s propped up in your bed—reading in bed can be heaven, assuming you can get just the right amount of light on the page and aren’t prone to spilling your coffee or cognac on the sheets. ! —Stephen King Bookmark? You mean quitter strip? ! —Unknown Don’t ask who’s influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he’s digested, and I’ve been reading all my life. ! —Giorgos Seferis Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of the night. ! --P. J. O’Rourke Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? To the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voice of all times? ! --James Russell Lowell Boys will be boys; girls will read books....from an early age, boys are discouraged by society to read; when they do pick up a novel, they prefer its subject be ‘disgusting,’ humorous, and short. Furthermore, boys tend to read books with a male protago- nist, while girls will read a broader sampling of viewpoints. ! --Francine Prose There’s something special about people who are interested in the printed word. They are a species all their own—learned, kind, knowledgeable and human. --Nathan Pine ! - !4 - ! The public which reads, in any sense of the word worth considering, is very, very small; the public which would feel no lack if all bookprinting ceased tomorrow is enormous. ! --George Gissing A bookworm in bed with a new novel and a good reading lamp is as much prepared for pleasure as a pretty girl at a college dance. ! --Phyllis McGinley Almost nothing in our culture encourages the private moment of reading. ! --Elizabeth Sifton But reading is important. It is especially important to children. It is the key which unlocks the gates of formal education, the means by which the wisdom of the past and the technology of the present are made available. But it can do much more. Through reading, a child may live another’s life for a few hours. He becomes Huck Finn and wrestles with the problem of laws that destroy freedom; or he is Johnny Tremaine and learns in the time of the American Revolution how adversity may be put to good use....By learning to identify with others, to suffer or to rejoice as he en- counters tragedy or joy, he can develop a sense of empathy towards the life around him—his fellow companions as well as the creatures of the world he inhabits. ! --Scott O’Dell If I am at all partial, it is to the man who reads rapidly.