Daniel Pennac Quotes & Sayings

Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one's place, but that no one can replace either. It offers no definitive explanation of our destiny but links us inextricably to life. Its tiny secret links remind us of how paradoxically happy we are to be alive, while illuminating how tragically absurd life is. So our reasons for reading are as strange as our reasons for living. And no one has the right to call that intimacy into account. — Daniel Pennac

A well-chosen book saves you from everything, including yourself. — Daniel Pennac

If reading isn't about communication, it is, in the end, about sharing. But a deferred and fiercely selective kind of sharing. — Daniel Pennac

Reader's Bill of Rights
1. The right to not read
2. The right to skip pages
3. The right to not finish
4. The right to reread
5. The right to read anything
6. The right to escapism
7. The right to read anywhere
8. The right to browse
9. The right to read out loud
10. The right to not defend your tastes — Daniel Pennac

All it takes is one teacher - just one - to save us from ourselves and make us forget all the others. — Daniel Pennac

Time to read is always time stolen. (Like time to write, for that matter, or time to love).
Stolen from what?
From the tyranny of living. — Daniel Pennac

A child has no great wish to perfect himself in the use of an instrument of torture, but make it a means to his pleasure, and soon you will not be able to keep him from it. — Daniel Pennac

We keep quiet about what we read. Our enjoyment of a book remains a jealously guarded secret. Perhaps because there's no need to talk, or because it takes time to distill what we've read before we can say anything. Silence is our guarantee of intimacy. We might have finished reading but we're still living
the book. — Daniel Pennac

By making time to read, like making time to love, we expand our time for living. — Daniel Pennac

I have never experienced a sorrow that was not relieved by an hour of reading. — Daniel Pennac

Each country thinks its school is in a specific crisis, without ever linking the school's crisis to that of the society around it. — Daniel Pennac

The question isn't whether I have time to read or not (time that nobody will ever give me, by the way), but whether I'll allow myself the pleasure of being a reader. — Daniel Pennac

The paradoxical virtue of reading lies in distancing ourselves from the world so that we may make sense of it. — Daniel Pennac

You can't make someone read. Just like you can't make them fall in love, or dream ... — Daniel Pennac

Reading is an act of resistance. Against what? Against all constraints. — Daniel Pennac

We see that that ritual of reading every evening at the end of the bed when they were so little
set time, set gestures
was like a prayer. — Daniel Pennac

The teacher is commodified, the school is a shop, the subjects are consumer goods. To read, to think, to reflect, isn't a question of want, it's a question of need. — Daniel Pennac

Forced to think you end up coming to a conclusion.Forced to come to a conclusion you make a decision.And once you made the decision you really acts. — Daniel Pennac

Reassured, we left their bedroom without understanding
or wanting to admit
that what a child learns first isn't the act but the gestures that accompany the act. And although it may also help them learn, this ostentatious show of reading is primarily intended to reassure them and please us. — Daniel Pennac

Time spent reading, like time spent loving, increases our lifetime. — Daniel Pennac

What we need to understand is that books weren't written so that young people could write essays about them, but so that they could read them if they really wanted to.
Knowledge, academic track record, career, and social life are one thing. Our intimacy and cultural awareness as readers are quite another. — Daniel Pennac

If you're wondering how you'll find time, it means you don't really want to read. Because nobody's ever got time. Children certainly haven't, nor have teenagers or grown-ups. Life always gets in the way.
Time to read is always time stolen.
Stolen from what?
From the tyranny of living." — Daniel Pennac

We human beings build houses because we're alive but we write books because we're mortal. We live in groups because we're sociable but we read because we know we're alone. Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one's place but that no one can replace either. It offers no definitive explanation of our destiny but links us inextricably to life. Its tiny secret links remind us of how paradoxically happy we are to be alive while illuminating how tragically absurd life is. — Daniel Pennac

But reading is different, reading is something you do. With TV, and cinema for that matter, everything's handed to you on a plate, nothing has to be worked at, they just spoon-feed you. The picture, the sound, the scenery, the atmospheric music in case you haven't understood what the director's on about ... The creaking door that tells you to be stiff. You have to imagine it all when you're reading. — Daniel Pennac

I master my doubts now. I have fun with them, they're my travelling companions. — Daniel Pennac

The children became their reciprocal angels: readers. — Daniel Pennac

When you buy a jacket, it's important the pockets are big enough for a paperback! — Daniel Pennac

Once a book falls into our possession, it is ours, the same way children lay their claim: 'That's my book.' As if it were organically part of them. That must be why we have so much trouble returning borrowed books. It's not exactly theft (of course not, we're not thieves, what are you implying?); it's simply a slippage in ownership or, better still, a transfer of substance. That which belonged to someone else becomes mine when I look at it. And if I like what I read, naturally I'll have difficulty giving it back. — Daniel Pennac

I've never had time to read. But no one ever kept me from finishing a novel I loved. — Daniel Pennac

He was an echo chamber for all books, the physical incarnation of words, the book made human. — Daniel Pennac

Our children start out as good readers and will remain so if the adults around them nourish their enthusiasm instead of trying to prove themselves. If we stimulate their desire to learn before making them recite out loud; if we support them in their efforts instead of trying to catch them out; if we give up whole evenings instead of trying to save time; if we make the present come alive without threatening them with the future; if we refuse to turn pleasure into a chore but nurture it instead. If we do all this, we ourselves will rediscover the pleasure of giving freely
because all cultural apprenticeship is free. — Daniel Pennac

Again, again ... " really means "We must love each other, you and I, if this one story, told and retold, is all we need." Reading again isn't about repeating yourself; it's about offering fresh proof of a love that never tires. — Daniel Pennac

Rather than allowing a book's intelligence to speak through our mouths, we replace it with our own intelligence as we talk about it. Rather than acting as emissary for the book, we become guardians of the temple, boasting of its wonders in the very words that slam shut it's doors: Reading matters! Reading matters! — Daniel Pennac