Quotes on Reading

When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle, a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read, I refused to do so.

Astronomy would not provide me with bread if men did not entertain hopes of reading the future in the heavens.

You take a text, you explore it, you enter it with all your heart and all your mind.

Charley is a mind-reading dog. There have been many trips in his lifetime, and often he has to be left at home. He knows we are going long before the suitcase has come out, and he paces and worries and whines and goes into a state of mild hysteria.

With twins, reading aloud to them was the only chance I could get to sit down. I read them picture books until they were reading on their own.

I'm always reading books-as many as there are. I ration myself on them so that I'll always be in supply.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.

People are always telling me that they've seen people reading my books on the subway, or the beach, or whenever.

Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

The Bible does not thrill; the Bible nourishes. Give time to the reading of the Bible and the recreating effect is as real as that of fresh air physically.

You may go on reading any number of books on Meditation. They can only tell you ‘Realize the Self’. The Self cannot be found in books. You have to find it for yourself in yourself.

I did not learn my theology all at once, but had to search constantly deeper and deeper for it. My temptations did that for me, for no one can understand Holy Scripture without practice and temptations...I t is not by reading, writing, or speculation that one becomes a theologian. Nay, rather, it is living, dying, and being damned that makes one a theologian.

Who are you, a hundred years from today, reading my poetry with curiosity?

You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease & intimacy with the process of writing... It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn't, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.

It is a writer's greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of their books

Just as you wouldn't leave the house without taking a shower, you shouldn't start the day without at least 10 minutes of sacred practice: prayer, meditation, inspirational reading.

This is what I love about novels - both reading them and writing them. They jump into the abyss to be with you where you are.

When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.