#reading

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book."

"I can read lips. Especially if they have words tattooed on them."

"[I] read books because I love them, not because I think I should read them."

"When you read to a child, when you put a book in a child's hands, you are bringing that child news of the infinitely varied nature of life. You are an awakener."

"Reading is very creative - it's not just a passive thing. I write a story; it goes out into the world; somebody reads it and, by reading it, completes it."

"Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?"

"Create your world with God's Word in your mouth just say it and it will be accomplished!"

"I keep my motivational book collection in the fridge. Hey, Who Moved My Cheese?! Did somebody let grandpa out of his cage again?"

"A half-read book is a half-finished love affair."

"I also did some jail time a few years ago. Spent a whole summer in jail reading books. I pumped a ton of new knowledge and new thinking into myself."

"We're all strangers connected by what we reveal, what we share, what we take away--our stories. I guess that's what I love about books--they are thin strands of humanity that tether us to one another for a small bit of time, that make us feel less alone or even more comfortable with our aloneness, if need be."

"We read to know we're not alone."

"I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print, the way you crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful big green fig-tree."

"It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language"

"Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow. When this happened, other people in the family couldn't bring themselves to disturb them. All that could be heard in the parlor was the sound of pages, turning."

"Allowing yourself to stop reading a book - at page 25, 50, or even, less frequently, a few chapters from the end - is a rite of passage in a reader's life, the literary equivalent of a bar mitzvah or a communion, the moment at which you look at yourself and announce: Today I am an adult. I can make my own decisions."

"Books are like oxygen to a deep-sea diver,"she had once said. "Take them away and you might as well begin counting the bubbles."

"You can't just skip the boring parts.""Of course I can skip the boring parts.""How do you know they're boring if you don't read them?""I can tell.""Then you can't say you've read the whole play.""I think I can live a happy life, Meryl Lee, even if I don't read the boring parts of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.""Who knows?"she said. "Maybe you can't."

"Often on a wet day I begin counting up; what I've read and what I haven't read."