Can't Stop Reading Quotes & Sayings

I'm not addicted to books. I can stop reading once I've finished one more chapter. — Jason

When you pick up a script and you can't stop reading it because it's a real page-turner, that's a good sign. — Karl Urban

I love your books when I read them I can't stop reading them. — Charlie Higson

These are just stories, you know. They are part of what we are, but they are not the real thing. All this year I've been thinking, What would White Raven do? And today, every time I thought it, I just didn't care what White Raven would do. So today I've just done what I would do. I've just done what I think is right. I'm not going to stop making up stories. But I'm thinking now that they aren't just for pretending to be someone else, someone more exciting, someone braver than you really are. They are not always jut a maze to get lost in so you can run away from life. They can just as well be maps to help you navigate. — Elizabeth Wein

Ignoring me, he read the title of the book I kept firmly between our gazes. "Lover awakened. " He nestled his head on my shoulder. "Weren't you reading this book last month? "
"No."
He raised a brow.
"Yes. I can't stop. I've read it twenty-seven times in a row. — Darynda Jones

It's only in books--actual printed books--that you can easily start and stop your reading, that you can preread and reread, and, these days, as the book itself suffers from a cluster of plagues, it seems only right to pause and assert that the books that ought to be rescued these days are not the books that require a "spoiler alert"--such books are already spoiled--but books that aren't spoiled even if you know what's going to happen, even if you peek at the end, even if you're reading them for a second, or fifth, or dozenth time. — J.C. Hallman

The main thing is to WRITE. Some days it might be 2000 words. Some days you might tinker with two sentences until you get them just right. Both days belong in the writing life. Some days you may watch a 'Doctor Who' marathon or become immersed in a book that is so good you can't stop reading. Some days you may be in love or in mourning. Those days belong in the writing life, too. Live them without guilt. — L.K. Madigan

Court TV. I can't stop watching it. I am absolutely obsessed! If I'm not reading a book or spending time with my husband, my friends or my dog, I am watching Court TV. — Debra Messing

My problem is that while other people are reading fifty books I'm reading one book fifty times. I only stop when at the bottom of page 20, say, I realise I can recite pages 21 and 22 from memory. Then I put the book away for a few years. — Helene Hanff

Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading. Stop them reading what they enjoy or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like - the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian 'improving' literature - you'll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and, worse, unpleasant. — Neil Gaiman

Because reading is one of the joys of life, and once you begin, you can't stop, and you've got so many stories to look forward to. — Benedict Cumberbatch

Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw. — David Mitchell

It's very important not to talk down to kids, and to give them something which they think is quite grown-up and hardcore. Kids themselves are very good at self-censoring. If they don't like something, if they think it's too strong for them, they'll simply stop reading. That's the thing about a book, you can't force someone to read it ... I think there's a lot in my books about friendship, leadership, about society and how it works, how we learn to live with each other and what skills do we need to make a viable society. Kids don't need to know any of that, they just want someone to be eaten again. — Charlie Higson

Write when you can't stop writing. Read when you stopped writing! — Robert Ahaness

People don't read anymore. And, when they do, they don't read books like this one, but instead read books that depress them, because those books are seen as important. Somehow, the Librarians have successfully managed to convince most people in the Hushlands that they shouldn't read anything that isn't boring.
It comes down to Biblioden the Scrivener's great vision for the world - a vision in which people never do anything abnormal, never dream, and never experience anything strange. His minions teach people to stop reading fun books, and instead focus on fantasy novels. That's what I call them, because these books keep people trapped. Keep them inside the nice little fantasy that they consider to be the 'real' world. A fantasy that tells them they don't need to try something new.
After all, trying new things can be difficult. — Brandon Sanderson

I can't belly dance.'
Yes, you can. It's in your fi
'
Will you stop reading my goddamn file! — Jennifer Rardin

The Lord has taught me so much through books. Maybe that's why I can't stop reading — Amanda Penland

When you're reading a book, you're always looking for the natural place to stop. With a movie, you can't really have that sense of it coming momentarily to a halt; there's pressure to keep the momentum up. — David Nicholls

Then I started reading this timetable I had in my pocket. Just stop lying. Once I get started, I can go on for hours if I feel like it. No kidding. Hours. — J.D. Salinger

One evening, after he'd read a piece about yet another savagery in Bosnia, I saw there were tears in his eyes. 'Don't it ever stop?' he said. 'I can mind Father telling that there'd be no more wars, not after his one. It shames me. It shames all of us. What's the good in reading, if that's all there is to read about? — Michael Morpurgo

I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone. — Mark Twain

Learning to pause is the first step in the practice of Radical Acceptance. A pause is a suspension of activity, a time of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving toward any goal ... The pause can occur in the midst of almost any activity and can last for an instant, for hours or for seasons of our life ... We may pause in the midst of meditation to let go of thoughts and reawaken our attention to the breath. We may pause by stepping out of daily life to go on a retreat or to spend time in nature or to take a sabbatical ... You might try it now: Stop reading and sit there, doing "no thing," and simply notice what you are experiencing. — Tara Brach

Every second the Universe divides into possibilities and most of those possibilities never happen. It is not a uni-verse - there is more than one reading. The story won't stop, can't stop, it goes on telling itself, waiting for an intervention that changes what will happen next.
Love is an intervention. — Jeanette Winterson

Happy we were then, for we had a good house, and good food, and good work. There was nothing to do outside at night, except chapel, or choir, or penny-readings, sometimes. But even so, we always found plenty to do until bedtime, for if we were not studying or reading, then we were making something out back, or over the mountain singing somewhere. I can remember no time when there was not plenty to be done.
I wonder what has happened in fifty years to change it all ... But when people stop being friends with their mother and fathers, and itching to be out of the house, and going mad for other things to do, I cannot think. It is like an asthma, that comes on a man quickly. He has no notion how he had it, but there it is, and nothing can cure it. — Richard Llewellyn

Victor, if you read this stuff, you can save people in the past from drowning. It's like time is a river, and it's nighttime, and you can hear people calling, Help, we're disappearing! So you stop and listen. That's how you save them. — Peter Gould

I don't have a lot of time. I can give a poem a couple of lines, a short story a paragraph, and a novel a few pages, then if I can stop reading without a sense of loss, I do, and I go on to something else. — Flannery O'Connor

Dinosaurs are the jumper cables to the human mind. Kids can't curb their enthusiasm when they're in a hall of dinosaurs and mammoths and mammoth hunters and trilobites and giant fish that could chomp up a shark. These natural objects in motion and context make kids want to read; you can't stop them from reading and thinking. — Robert T. Bakker

Listening to someone read aloud is very different from reading in silence. When you read, you can stop or skip sentences: you are the one who sets the pace. When someone else is reading, it is difficult to make your attention coincide with the tempo of his reading: the voice goes either too fast or too slow.
And then, listening to someone who is translating from another language involves a fluctuation, a hesitation over the words, a margin of indecision, something vague, tentative. The text, when you are the reader, is something that is there, against which you are forced to clash; when someone translates it aloud to you, it is something that is and is not there, that you cannot manage to touch. — Italo Calvino

Never stop reading, Luke. The words from the pages make me feel like I'm right there, like I can smell the sea and hear the wind. It's my one regret that I didn't read much over the years. How can you learn about all the things happening in the world if you don't read? — Lea Davey

To me; reading a book is like watching a movie. Once I start, I can't stop until it's over. — Anonymous

Poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication[Poetry] mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensification of language via rhythm, syntax, image and metaphor. Reading it-the best of it-can create another, very different kind of perpetual present, an awareness that can be as ongoing in the soul as the stop-time of trauma. — Sven Birkerts

Tell me, if you teach someone the alphabet, how can you stop him from reading? When one has tasted the elixir of love, how can she not thirst for it? Once you have seen yourself through your beloved's eyes, you're not the same person any longer. I was blind all this time, and now that my eyes are open, i'm afraid of light. But i don't want to live like a mole. Not anymore. — Elif Shafak

So I kept reading, just to stay alive. In fact, I'd read two or three books at the same time, so I wouldn't finish one without being in the middle of another
anything to stop me from falling into the big, gaping void. You see, books fill the empty spaces. If I'm waiting for a bus, or am eating alone, I can always rely on a book to keep me company. Sometimes I think I like them even more than people. People will let you down in life. They'll disappoint you and hurt you and betray you. But not books. They're better than life. — Marc Acito

g) Time it takes to reinvent yourself: five years. Here's a description of the five years: Year One: You're flailing and reading everything and just starting to do. Year Two: You know who you need to talk to and network with. You're doing every day. You finally know what the Monopoly board looks like in your new endeavors. Year Three: You're good enough to start making money. It might not be a living yet. Year Four: You're making a good living, and you can quit your day job. Year Five: You're making wealth. Sometimes you get frustrated in years one through four. You say, "Why isn't it happening yet?" That's okay. Just keep going. Or stop and pick a new field. — James Altucher

We can connect with that openness at any time. For instance, right now, for three seconds, just stop reading and pause. If — Pema Chodron

Okay? Now you know all this stuff about me, and I still don't know anything about you. I don't even know if you're still there. Are you? And if you are, can I trust you with the rest? I still want to know - are you a good person? Maybe that's not fair of me to ask, since I haven't even figured out whether I'm a good person or not. I guess you can be the judge. Here's the deal. If you're okay with me so far, then keep reading. But if you've gotten this far and you think I'm the lowest of the low and I don't deserve to have my own book, then maybe you should stop right now. Because it only gets worse from here. (Or better, depending on how you look at it.) Signed, your friend (?), RK — James Patterson

It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read. — Philip Pullman

By reading God's Word, we can easily begin to live an anxiety-free life. God grants us freedom in Him when we stop worrying. He is our refuge; we should take comfort in Him, not doubt Him. — George Papakonstantinou

So one time I said to her that she should stop reading it, because it was just depressing, so she was like, But I want to know what's going on, so I was like, Then you should do something about it. It's a free country. You should do something. She was like, Nothing's ever going to happen in a two-party system. She was like, da da da, nothing's ever going to change, both parties are in the pocket of big business, da da da, all that? So I was like, You got to believe in the people, it's a democracy, we can change things.
She was like, It's not a democracy. — M T Anderson

Books can be viewed as food for the mind

Stop reading and your brain can become anemic

Read junk and your thinking can become malnourished

But handle your diet with books well and your life long learning never stops — Jonathan Frakes

In the book i'm reading (The Principal) the main chareter best friend has to go to a differnt school. I can picture them waiting at the bus stop together crying. — Jerry Spinelli

My phone buzzes and I fish it from my pocket, expecting Tacey or maybe my parents checking in to make sure I'm okay. But it's an unfamiliar number.
Do you blame yourself?
I read the words once. Twice. I see Stella's locker door swinging open and I hear a train whistle, but neither are happening. It's all in my head. I force myself to take a breath and head outside. This text is a wrong number. It's not for me, and it's definitely not about Stella.
And then another message.
Do you wish you'd done something? What if you still could?
I text back quickly.
I think you have the wrong number.
I don't have the wrong number, Piper. — Natalie D. Richards

I like big books and I cannot lie.
You other readers can't deny
That when a kid walks in with The Name of the Wind
Like a hardbound brick of win.
Story bling.
Wanna swipe that thing
Cause you see that boy is speeding
Right through the book he's reading.
I'm hooked and I can't stop pleading.
Wanna curl up with that for ages,
All thousand pages.
Reviewers tried to warn me.
But with that plot you hooked
Me like Bradley.
Ooh, crack that fat spine.
You know I wanna make you mine.
This book is stella 'cause it ain't some quick novella. — Jim C. Hines

The book that simply demands to be read, for no good reason, is asking us to change our lives by putting aside what we usually think of as good reasons. It's asking us to stop calculating. It's asking us to do something for the plain old delight and interest of it, not because we can justify its place on the mental spreadsheet or accounting ledger (like the one Benjamin Franklin kept) by which we tote up the value of our actions. — Alan Jacobs

I would still be reading out loud. I think that if you are any kind of an artist, then validation is just sort of ... it can be a result, but you're going to do the work anyway. Because you're just wired that way. It's so engrained, it's such a part of your personality that you don't just stop doing it. Eventually I'll retire on some level, eventually no one will want to buy my books or a ticket to see me read, it's inevitable that's going to happe — David Sedaris

Once I start reading something, I can't stop. I obsessively read, which is a problem with long books! — Keegan Allen

Life is not meant to be hard so that you can be happy beyond it. The happy "ending," therefore, comes with finally understanding those tricky areas you move through while you are alive. The key is that you do indeed need to move through them and not "stop reading at the scary parts"; you must prevail, hang on, and keep trucking to emerge on the other side of whatever the tricky area was. — Mike Dooley

Words are alive
when I've found a story that I love, I read it again and again, like playing a favorite song over and over.
Reading isn't passive
I enter the story with the characters, breathe their air, feel their frustrations,
scream at them to stop when they're about to do something stupid, cry with them, laugh with them.
Reading for me, is spending time with a friend. A book is a friend. You can never have too many. — Gary Paulsen

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. — Sara Nelson

Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned. — Chuck Palahniuk

I won't lie. Walking into a room and seeing your girlfriend reading a baby-name book can kind of make your heart stop.
"I'm no expert," I began, choosing my words carefully. "Well - actually, I am. And I'm pretty sure there are certain things we have to do before you need to be reading that. — Richelle Mead

When you assume you make a you-know-what out of U and me. Yep, so let's stop assuming so much. We are often quick to explain details to strangers, who we understand might not be reading our minds, but we often assume that those people closest to us, those who share our household such as spouses, children parents and siblings, can read our minds. And we get upset with them when they don't go figure.
I wonder how many angry words are directed not at an action or inaction as would at first appear, but simply at the fact that somebody did not read our minds.
So let's give those people we care most about the benefit of the doubt and do a little less assuming and a little more explaining. — David Leonhardt

Let me begin with a heartfelt confession.
I admit it. I am a biblioholic, one who loves books and whose life would seem incomplete without them. I am an addict, with a compulsive need to stop by nearly any bookstore I pass in order to get my fix. Books are an essential part of my life, the place where I have spent many unforgettable moments. For me, reading is one of the most enjoyable ways to pass a rainy afternoon or a leisurely summer day. I crave the knowledge and insights that truly great books bring into my life and can spend transported hours scouring used book stores for volumes which "I simply must have". I love the smell and feel of well-loved books and the look of a bookcase full of books waiting to be taken down and read. — Terry W. Glaspey

If you can swing it, getting arrested is the high point of the Fourth of July. Also, the reading of the Declaration of Independence is exciting. (Yes, the Declaration was written two years after Essex is officially set. No, this doesn't stop us.) [ ... ] Essex stayed open late that night, for the holiday. Our patriotism cannot be constrained by an eight-hour workday. — Leila Sales

Good boy" can be canceled out the next day by "bad boy." "You're a smart girl" by "What a stupid thing to do!" "Careful" by "Careless" . . . and so on.

But you can't take away the time he shoveled the whole walkway even though his arms were tired and his toes were frozen. Or the time he made the baby laugh with his goofy faces when the babysitter couldn't get her to stop crying, or found his mom's reading glasses, or figured out how to make the alarm on the cell phone stop going off when no one else could do it. These are the things he can draw upon to give himself confidence in the face of adversity and discouragement. In the past he did something he was proud of, and he has, within himself, the power to do it again. — Julie King

Oh Beck, I love reading your e-mail. Learning your life. And I am careful; I always mark new messages unread so that you won't get alarmed. My good fortune doesn't stop there; You prefer e-mail. You don't like texting. So this means that I am not missing out on all that much communication. You wrote an "essay" for some blog in which you stated that "e-mails last forever. You can search for any word at any time and see everything you ever said to anyone about that one word. Texts go away." I love you for wanting a record. I love your records for being so accessible and I'm so full of you, your calendar of caloric intake and hookups and menstrual moments, your self-portraits you don't publish, your recipes and exercises. You will know me soon too, I promise. — Caroline Kepnes

To all the kids from the "special" reading class back in high school (the one where you tried to form words using wooden blocks)
PLEASE stop telling me that I can't blame an "inanimate object" for the off-the-hook gun violence in this country. YES! ... I CAN!!! I blame all the "inanimate objects" in Congress who refuse to pass sensible gun legislation because they're too chicken-shit to take on Wayne LaPierre and the gun lobby. — Quentin R. Bufogle

Women will never stop reading books when they can relate to characters and gain insight into their own lives. — Sarah Jo Smith

While reading writers of great formulatory power - Henry James, Santayana, Proust - I find I can scarcely get through a page without having to stop to record some lapidary sentence. Reading Henry James, for example, I have muttered to myself, "C'mon, Henry, turn down the brilliance a notch, so I can get some reading done." I may be one of a very small number of people who have developed writer's cramp while reading. — Joseph Epstein

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen 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. — Anne Lamott

Margarine? That's not food. I Can't Believe It's Not Butter? I can. If you're planning on using margarine in anything, you can stop reading now, because I won't be able to help you. — Anthony Bourdain

Real mystery - the very reason to read (and certainly write) any book - was to them a thing to dismantle, distill and mine out into rubble they could tyrannize into sorry but more permanent explanations; monuments to themselves, in other words. In my view all teachers should be required to stop teaching at age thirty-two and not allowed to resume until they're sixty-five, so that they can live their lives, not teach them away - live lives full of ambiguity and transience and regret and wonder, be asked to explain nothing in public until very near the end when they can't do anything else.
Explaining is where we all get into trouble. — Richard Ford

Sometimes I do readings and people can't stop laughing, but I'm reading about pretty tragic things. I think Soviet humor is a desperate humor, rather typical of very different nations, of Jewish people, Ukrainians, and of course, Russians. It's despair - just keep laughing, until you are dead. — Alina Bronsky

I love stories that suck you in, that you can't stop reading because you are quite simply there. — Sara Sheridan