Readin Quotes

1. "The reading eye must do the work to make them live, and so it did, again and again, never the same life twice, as the artist had intended."
Author: A.S. Byatt

2. "Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader's imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them."
Author: Alan Bennett

3. "One day after the exams, the teachers sat at their desks correcting papers while the pupils read comics, played chess or cards or talked quietly in groups. Coulter at a desk in front of Thaw turned round and said, "What are ye reading?"Thaw showed a book of critical essays on art and literature.Coulter said accusingly, "You don't read that for fun.""Yes, I read it for fun." "People our age don't read that sort of book for fun. They read it to show they're superior.""But I read this sort of book even when there's nobody around to see me.""That shows you arenae trying to make us think you're superior, you're trying to make yourself think you're superior."
Author: Alasdair Gray

4. "Surreal realized Daemon's madness was confined to emotions, to people, to that single tragedy he couldn't face. It was as if Titian had never died, as if Surreal hadn't spent three years whoring in back alleys before Daemon found her again and arranged for a proper education in a Red Moon house. He thought she was still a child, and he continued to fret about Titian's absence. But when she mentioned a book she was reading, he made a dry observation about her eclectic taste and proceeded to tell her about other books that might be of interest. It was the same with music, with art. They posed no threat to him, had no time frame, weren't part of the nightmare of Jaenelle bleeding on that Dark Altar."
Author: Anne Bishop

5. "Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They depen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship."
Author: Anne Lamott

6. "I'm not being naive; I realise there's no such thing as a pure reading. But I'd rather keep myself as far out of it as I can."
Author: Anne Michaels

7. "This man, who for twenty-five years has been reading and writing about art, and in all that time has never understood anything about art, has for twenty-five years been hashing over other people's ideas about realism, naturalism and all that nonsense; for twenty-five years he has been reading and writing about what intelligent people already know and about what stupid people don't want to know--which means that for twenty-five years he's been taking nothing and making nothing out of it. And with it all, what conceit! What pretension!"
Author: Anton Chekhov

8. "This is what reading is like to me. It's finding a spring in the midst of a barren land. Just when I think I might up and die of thirst, I stumble onto this fresh, cold water, and I'm suddenly given this new life because I can-and do-drink to my heart's content."
Author: Beverly Lewis

9. "Whitney and I have fun reading the newspaper sometimes. You'd be amazed at the places they say I've been."
Author: Bobby Brown

10. "An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. . . . We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants cold wetness."
Author: C.S. Lewis

11. "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."
Author: Caitlin Flanagan

12. "The reading rooms were large and quiet. Their windows were filmed in dust and desiccated insects, and seemed to age the light falling across the communal tables and the volumes in scores of languages."
Author: China Miéville

13. "What struck me, in reading the reports from Sri Lanka, was the mild disgrace of belonging to our imperfectly evolved species in the first place. People who had just seen their neighbors swept away would tell the reporters that they knew a judgment had been coming, because the Christians had used alcohol and meat at Christmas or because ... well, yet again you can fill in the blanks for yourself. It was interesting, though, to notice that the Buddhists were often the worst. Contentedly patting an image of the chubby lord on her fencepost, a woman told the New York Times that those who were not similarly protected had been erased, while her house was still standing. There were enough such comments, almost identically phrased, to make it seem certain that the Buddhist authorities had been promulgating this consoling and insane and nasty view. That would not surprise me."
Author: Christopher Hitchens

14. "Cyril had staked out his claim and refused to move. "Move over!" I said, freeing one hand from holding the cat to push. "Dogs are supposed to sleep at the foot of the bed." Cyril had never heard of this rule. He jammed his body up against my back and began to snore. I tugged at the rugs, trying to get enough to cover me, and turned on my side, the cat cradled in my arms. Princess Arjumand paid no attention to the regulations of animals on the bed either. She promptly wriggled free and walked round the bed, treading on Cyril, who responded with a faint "oof," and kneading her claws in my leg. Cyril shoved and shoved again until he had the entire bed and all the covers, and Princess Arjumand draped herself across my neck with her full weight on my Adam's apple. Cyril shoved some more. An hour into this little drama it began to rain in earnest, and everyone moved in under the covers and began jockeying for position again."
Author: Connie Willis

15. "If you're in your life, chance. Viewed from the outside, like a book you're reading, it's fate all the way."
Author: David Mitchell

16. "Man reading ought to be a man intensely alive. The book ought to be a ball of light in his hands."
Author: Ezra Pound

17. "Also, I've spent an entire week without reading any books or talking about them too loudly. I'm learning to work my apparat's screen, the colourful pulsating mosaic of it, the fact that it knows every last stinking detail about the world, whereas my books only know the minds of their authors."
Author: Gary Shteyngart

18. "And if our book consumption remains as low as it has been, at least let us admit that it is because reading is a less exciting pastime than going to the dogs, the pictures or the pub, and not because books, whether bought or borrowed, are too expensive."
Author: George Orwell

19. "Time passes slowly. Nobody says a word, everyone lost in quiet reading. One person sits at a desk jotting down notes, but the rest are sitting there silently, not moving, totally absorbed. Just like me."
Author: Haruki Murakami

20. "I love fortune readings! because when I get in troubles, if the reading says that I am in a lucky day, I can think my troubles are just some kind of mistakes, and if the reading says that I am in the unlucky day, I can think that my troubles are just because of my bad luck. Either ways, I can know the reason of my troubles."
Author: Hiroko Sakai

21. "It was a very touch- and- go business, in 1955, to get a wholly plausible reading from Mrs. Glass's face, and especially from her enormous blue eyes. Where once, a few years earlier, her eyes alone could break the news (either to people or to bathmats) that two of her sons were dead, one by suicide (her favorite, her most intricately calibrated, her kindest son) and one killed in World Ward II (her only truly lighthearted son)- where once Bessie Glass's eyes alone could report these facts, with an eloquence and a seeming passion for detail that neither her husband nor any of her adult surviving children could bear to look at, let alone take in, now, in 1955, she was apt to use this same terrible Celtic equipment to break the news, usually at the front door, that the new delivery boy hadn't brought the leg of lamb in time for dinner or that some remote Hollywood starlet's marriage was on the rocks."
Author: J.D. Salinger

22. "Reading that pleases and profits, that together delights and instructs, has all that one should desire."
Author: Jacques Amyot

23. "He considered his disposition as of the sort which must suffer heavily, uniting very strong feelings with quiet,serious, and retiring manners, and a decided taste for reading and sedentary pursuits."
Author: Jane Austen

24. "Reading a great work of literature can truly be likened to having a conversation with a great mind."
Author: Jennie Chancey

25. "Here is what I think now, reading what I wrote down for the police at age fifteen, right after I was raped. I was a good girl. Always a good girl, even when I was bad. I did my homework. If I can only be good enough, someone will eventually notice that I am trying so hard, exhausting myself with my effort to be good. This is true even today. (17)"
Author: Jessica Stern

26. "Homer and Candy passed by the empty and brightly lit dispensary; they peeked into Nurse Angela's empty office. Homer knew better than to peek into the delivery room when the light was on. From the dormitory, they could hear Dr. Larch's reading voice. Although Candy held tightly to his hand, Homer was inclined to hurry – in order not to miss the bedtime story."
Author: John Irving

27. "As a child I was really into fantasy books with elves and goblins and swords, and I went through a phase for a few years when I was reading endless series. But in the end I became totally fed-up with all these sub-Tolkien rip-offs because they all end up doing the same old things and there's no rigour to it."
Author: Jonathan Stroud

28. "The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me."
Author: Joyce Carol Oates

29. "- Dude, it's Jocelyn, I (Jordan) say looking over my shoulder nervously [...]- This isn't Jocelyn, B.J says sighing. It's Jordan. Dude, try to play a better trick than that. You sound nothing like her. Plus your number came up on my caller ID.PS: maybe I'm just in a very good mood, but I keep laughing while reading this book, there are plenty of scenes that make me smile, and this is one of them.. it's just hilarious how silly and funny these characters are ;))"
Author: Lauren Barnholdt

30. "Reading books in one's youth is like looking at the moon through a crevice; reading books in middle age is like looking at the moon in one's courtyard; and reading books in old age is like looking at the moon on an open terrace."
Author: Lin Yutang

31. "I often have trouble falling asleep at night, so when I'm lying in bed I think up stories. That's where I do a lot of my thinking. I also get a lot of ideas while I'm reading - sometimes reading someone else's stories will make me think of one of my own."
Author: Linda Sue Park

32. "What I like most: Reading well-written sources that take me to another world for hours at a time - and being able to call that 'work!' Also, of course, finding a gem of information that is either exactly what I was looking for, or else fits perfectly into the story in some way."
Author: Linda Sue Park

33. "At this point, I couldn't help it. I walked around to see her better, and from the moment I witnessed her face again, I could tell that this was who she loved the most. Her expression stroked the man on his face. It followed one of the lines down his cheek. He had sat in the washroom with her and taught her how to roll a cigarette. He gave bread to a dead man on Munich Street and told the girl to keep reading in the bomb shelter. Perhaps if he didn't, she might not have ended up writing in the basement. Papa - the accordionist - and Himmel Street. One could not exist without the other, because for Liesel, both were home. Yes, that's what Hans Hubermann was for Liesel Meminger."
Author: Markus Zusak

34. "Promiscuity is like never reading past the first page. Monogamy is like reading the same book over and over."
Author: Mason Cooley

35. "Lastly, it should be noted that the nostalgia which the reading public maintains for my former Baker Street address does not exist in me. I no longer crave the bustle of London streets, nor do I miss navigating the tangled mires created by the criminally disposed."
Author: Mitch Cullin

36. "The liberal arts are the arts of communication and thinking. ‘They are the arts indispensable to further learning, for they are the arts of reading, writing, speaking, listening, figuring,"
Author: Oliver DeMille

37. "Good works?""About the village, sir. Reading to the bedridden - chatting with the sick - that sort of thing, sir. We can but trust that good results will ensue.""Yes, I suppose so," I said doubtfully. "But, by gosh, if I were a sick man I'd hate to have a looney like young Bingo coming and gibbering at my bedside."
Author: P.G. Wodehouse

38. "And when I was young, did I ever tell you, I always wanted to get insidea book and never come out again? I loved reading so much I wantedto be a part of it, and there were some books I could have stayed infor ever."
Author: Peter Ackroyd

39. "It [fiction] allows us to see the world from the point of view of someone else and there has been quite a lot of neurological research that shows reading novels is actually good for you. It embeds you in society and makes you think about other people. People are certainly better at all sorts of things if they can hold a novel in their heads. It is quite a skill, but if you can't do it then you're missing out on something in life. I think you can tell, when you meet someone, whether they read novels or not. There is some little hollowness if they don't."
Author: Philip Hensher

40. "[Harry] had always suffered from a vague restlessness, a longing for adventure that she told herself severely was the result of reading too many novels when she was a small child."
Author: Robin McKinley

41. "The book is worth reading, in part because it is enjoyable to read of other people's folly, not to mention their avarice and stupidity." -- Roger Lowenstein, reviewing "Devil Take the Hindmost: a History of Financial Speculation", WSJ 6-1-99"
Author: Roger Lowenstein

42. "Digital distribution has widened the reading world."
Author: Sara Sheridan

43. "Madame Vbegins the lessonby reading aloud the first stanzaof a famous French poem:Il pleure dans mon coeurComme il pleut sur la ville;Quelle est cette langueurQui penetre mon coeur?Then she looks upand without any warningshe calls on me to translate it.I swallow hard, and try:"It's raining in my heartlike it's raining in the city.What is this sadness that pierces my heart?"Saying these words out loud,right in front of the whole class,makes me feellike I'm not wearing any clothes."
Author: Sonya Sones

44. "Bill Gates (and his successor at Microsoft, Ray Ozzie) are famous for taking annual reading vacations. During the year they deliberately cultivate a stack of reading material—much of it unrelated to their day-to-day focus at Microsoft—and then they take off for a week or two and do a deep dive into the words they've stockpiled. By compressing their intake into a matter of days, they give new ideas additional opportunities to network among themselves, for the simple reason that it's easier to remember something that you read yesterday than it is to remember something you read six months ago."
Author: Steven Johnson

45. "Better to find out certain things by living them, not by reading them in a book."
Author: Susanna Kearsley

46. "Maybe the guy loves a good bitch - but you're treading a thin line between attractively bitchy and psycho."
Author: Tarryn Fisher

47. "Promise me you will not spend so much time treading water and trying to keep your head above the waves that you forget, truly forget, how much you have always loved to swim."
Author: Tyler Knott Gregson

48. "I don't have any reason to hate anybody; I believe in good karma and spreading good energy."
Author: Vanilla Ice

49. "What thought or message would you put in a fortune cookie?"Stop reading this. Eat the cookie and live your life."
Author: Veronica Roth

50. "A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it."
Author: William Styron

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