Quotes on Reading Habits

I can't predict how reading habits will change. But I will say that the greatest loss is the paper archive - no more a great stack of manuscripts, letters, and notebooks from a writer's life, but only a tiny pile of disks, little plastic cookies where once were calligraphic marvels.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.

I had hundreds of books under my skin already. Not selected reading, all of it. Some of it could be called trashy. I had been through Nick Carter, Horatio Alger, Bertha M. Clay and the whole slew of dime novelists in addition to some really constructive reading. I do not regret the trash. It has harmed me in no way. It was a help, because acquiring the reading habit early is the important thing. Taste and natural development will take care of the rest later on.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all.

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends.

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

I had just taken to reading. I had just discovered the art of leaving my body to sit impassive in a crumpled up attitude in a chair or sofa, while I wandered over the hills and far away in novel company and new scenes... My world began to expand very rapidly,... the reading habit had got me securely.

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me.