Girls That Read Quotes & Sayings

The formal education of women was rarely considered important. Girls of good birth were taught domestic skills at home or in a convent, and rarely learned to read and write, for it was feared that if they did they would waste their talents writing love letters or reading romances that led to promiscuity. — Alison Weir

The girls were expected to grow up to be somebody's wife. They were also expected to read and write, those being considered soft indoor jobs that were too fiddly for the boys. — Terry Pratchett

Seriously, why do you read that crap?" asked the girl.
Book Boy snapped his volume shut and removed his glasses from his nose. "I speak the truth! In all of these books the girls are throwing themselves at the romantic heroes- romantic heroes who are dead, ho drink human blood. Be of good cheer, my brothers, for I tell you there is hope!"
One of the other guys, a large black chap, rolled his lone eye. "Okay, you're cut off. Someone get him a cookbook or something."
"Or, you know, some fair damsel to seduce," the girl said, looking up from her reflection. — Lia Habel

One of the girls read somewhere that a red flag was the proper symbol for the oppressed workers, and so they mounted one, and paraded all about the yards, yelling with rage. A new union was the result of this outburst, but the impromptu strike went to pieces in three days, owing to the rush of new labour. — Upton Sinclair

Poems are not for explaining," she said, her tone as bored and faintly scornful as his. "They are for pretty girls to read aloud. Everyone knows that. — Emily Horner

I think every parent knows that, like, boys and girls are different. And we just don't take that into account in schools on those things like required reading lists. 'Cause that was my experience, say, with my son, who had to read 'Little House on the Prairie' when he was in third grade. — Jon Scieszka

I see a time when the farmer will not need to live in a lonely cabin on a lonely farm. I see the farmers coming together in groups. I see them with time to read, and time to visit with their fellows. I see them enjoying lectures in beautiful halls, erected in every village. I see them gather like the Saxons of old upon the green at evening to sing and dance. I see cities rising near them with schools, and churches, and concert halls, and theaters. I see a day when the farmer will no longer be a drudge and his wife a bond slave, but happy men and women who will go singing to their pleasant tasks upon their fruitful farms. When the boys and girls will not go west nor to the city; when life will be worth living. In that day the moon will be brighter and the stars more glad, and pleasure and poetry and love of life come back to the man who tills the soil. — Hamlin Garland

When other girls had tea parties on the playground, I brought out my secondhand Ouija board and attempted to raise the dead. While my classmates gave book reports on The Wind In The Willows or Charlotte's Web, I did mine on tattered, paperback copies of Stephen King novels that I'd borrowed from my grandmother. Instead of Sweet Valley High, I read books about zombies and vampires. Eventually, my third grade teacher called my mother in to discuss her growing concerns over my behavior, and my mom nodded blithely, but failed to see what the problem was. When Mrs. Johnson handed her my recent book report on Pet Sematary,, my mom wrinkled her forehead with concern and disapproval. "Oh, I see,"she said disappointingly, as she turned to me. "You spelled 'cemetery' wrong." Then I explained that Stephen King had spelled it that way on purpose, and she nodded, saying, "Ah. Well, good enough for me. — Jenny Lawson

He stepped back, away from her. He shook his head in disbelief. "You know, I shouldn't try to go out with career women. You're all stricken. A guy can really tell what life has done to you. I do better with women who have part-time jobs."

"Oh, yes?" said Zoe. She had once read an article entitled "Professional Women and the Demographics of Grief." Or no, it was a poem: If there were a lake, the moonlight would dance across it in conniptions. She remembered that line. But perhaps the title was "The Empty House: Aesthetics of Bareness." Or maybe "Space Gypsies: Girls in Academe." She had forgotten. — Lorrie Moore

These guys are fakes. All they've got on their minds is impressing the new girls with the big words they're so proud of, while sticking their hanse up their skirts. And when they graduate,they cut their hair short and march off to work for Mitsubishi or IBM or Fuji Bank. They marry pretty wives who've never read Marx and have kids they give fancy names to that are enough to make you puke. Smash what educational-industrial complex? Don't make me laugh! — Haruki Murakami

I learned a long time ago that life introduces young people to situations they are in no way prepared for, even good girls, lucky girls who want for nothing. Sometimes, when you least expect it, you become the girl in the woods. You lose your name because another one is forced on you. You think you are alone until you find books about girls like you. Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read. Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life. Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself. They have allowed me to remember. They have allowed me to forget. They have allowed me to imagine different endings and better possible worlds. — Roxane Gay

Derek looked at Kylie and half chuckled. The last time I saw that look from girls, there was a handwritten note on my neighbor's tree house that read 'No boys allowed.' I'll see you. And if I get anything from my computer research, I'll let you know. — C.C. Hunter

Kids absolutely not reading. I think it's because they're so screen-oriented [TVs, computers, smartphones]. They do read - girls in particular read a lot. They have a tendency to go toward the paranormal, romances, Twilight and stuff like that. And then it starts to taper off because other things take precedence, like the Kardashian sisters. — Stephen King

She read absorbedly books found in boarding-house parlours, in hotels, in such public libraries as the times afforded. She was alone for hours a day, daily. Frequently her father, fearful of loneliness for her, brought her an armful of books and she had an orgy, dipping and swooping about among them in a sort of gourmand's ecstasy of indecision. In this way, at fifteen, she knew the writings of Byron, Jane Austen, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Felicia Hemans. Not to speak of Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth, Bertha M. Clay, and that good fairy of the scullery, the Fireside Companion, in whose pages factory girls and dukes were brought together as inevitably as steak and onions. These last were, of course, the result of Selina's mode of living, and were loaned to her by kind-hearted landladies, chambermaids, and waitresses all the way from California to New York. — Edna Ferber

I was not yet three years old when my mother determined to send one of my elder sisters to learn to read at a school for girls we call the Amigas. Affection, and mischief, caused me to follow her, and when I observed how she was being taught her lessons I was so inflamed with the desire to know how to read, that deceiving
for so I knew it to be
the mistress, I told her that my mother had meant for me to have lessons too ... I learned so quickly that before my mother knew of it I could already read ... — Juana Ines De La Cruz

- I'm just interested in women, Brian
- So am I, Kibby whined in urgent complaint.
- You think you are, but you're not. You read sci-fi magazines, for fuck sakes.
- I am! What I read's got nowt tae dae wi it! Kibby blurted.
Skinner shook his head. - You're not curious about girls, other than sexually. I know you fancied Shannon, but you never talked to her about anything that she might have been interested in, you just inflickted your own shite about video games and hillwalking clubs on to her. — Irvine Welsh

What would people in their old lives be saying about these girls? Would they be called missing? Would some documentary program on the ABC that nobody watched, or one of those thin newspapers nobody read, somehow connect their cases, find the thread to make them a story? The Lost Girls, they could be called. Would it be said, they 'disappeared', 'were lost'? Would it be said that they were abandoned or taken, the way people said a girl was attacked, a woman was raped, this femaleness always at the centre, as if womanhood itself were the cause of these things? As if the girls somehow, through the natural way of things, did it to themselves. They lured abduction and abandonment to themselves, they marshalled themselves into this prison where they had made their beds, and now, once more, were lying in them. — Charlotte Wood

In the early stages of writing children's books, an experienced lady editor said that while girls read boys' books, the converse was not true, and I may have been influenced by that. — John Christopher

....one of those long, romantic novels, six hundred and fifty pages of small print, translated from French or German or Hungarian or something -- because few of the English ones have the exact feeling I mean. And you read one page of it or even one phrase of it, and then you gobble up all the rest and go about in a dream for weeks afterwards, for months afterwards -- perhaps all your life, who knows? -- surrounded by those six hundred and fifty pages, the houses, the streets, the snow, the river, the roses, the girls, the sun, the ladies' dresses and the gentlemen's voices, the old, wicked, hard-hearted women and the old, sad women, the waltz music -- everything. What is not there you put in afterwards, for it is alive, this book, and it grows in your head. 'The house I was living in when I read that book,' you think, or 'This colour reminds me of that book. — Jean Rhys

Don't tell girls they can be anything they want when they grow up. Because it would have never occurred to them that they couldn't. It's like saying, 'Hey, when you get in the shower, I'm not gonna read your diary.' 'Wait
are you gonna read my diary?' 'No! I said I'm not gonna read your diary. Go take a shower!' — Sarah Silverman

An uncredited study she read once said, quote, "Girls become really stupid in science after they get their period, so you'd better learn as much as possible before that happens." I had such anxiety about this "clearly proven" biological fact that I was studying calculus by the age of twelve. When I finally got my period, I cried, not because I was growing up, but because I had just learned derivatives and really enjoyed doing them. I was scared that estrogen would wipe the ability to do them from my brain. — Felicia Day

Love. Oscar knew he should have checked out right then. He liked to kid himself that it was only cold anthropological interest that kept him around to see how it would all end, but the truth was he couldn't extricate himself. He was totally and irrevocably in love with Ana. What he used to feel for those girls he'd never really known was nothing compared to the amor he was carrying in his heart for Ana. It had the density of a dwarf-motherfucking-star and at times he was a hundred percent sure it would drive him mad. The only thing that came close to how he felt about his books; only the combined love he had for everything he'd read and everything he hoped to write came even close. — Junot Diaz

It wasn't hard to find such data. For example, between 1948 and 1954, psychologists asked more than 10,000 adolescents whether they considered theymselves to be a very important person. At that point, 12 percent said yes. The same question was revisited in 1989, and this time it wasn't 12 percent who considered themselves very important, it was 80 percent of boys and 77 percent of girls. Psychologists have a thing called the narcissism test. They read people statements and ask if the statements apply to them. Statements such as "I like to be the center of attention ... I show off if I get the chance because I am extraordinary ... Somebody should write a biography about me." The median narcissism score has risen 30 percent in the last two decades. Ninety-three percent of young people score higher than the middle score just twenty years ago.4 The largest gains have been in the number of people who agree with the statements "I am an extraordinary person" and "I like to look at my body. — David Brooks

From early Colonial days, sex life in America had been based on the custom of men supporting women. That situation reached its heyday in the Twenties when it was easy for any dabbler in stocks to flaunt his manhood by lavishing an unearned income on girls. But with the stock-market crash, men were hard put even to keep their wives, let alone spend money on sex outside the home. The adjustment was much easier on women than on men, who jumped out of windows in droves, whereas I can't recall a single headline that read: KEPT GIRL LEAPS FROM LOVE NEST. — Anita Loos

I go online all the time, I just don't read about myself. I read a fashion website called Go Fug Yourself. I actually correspond with the Fug Girls and that's great. — Anna Quindlen

So what do people see when they read that well-behaved women rarely make history? Do they imagine good-time girls in stiletto heels or do-good girls carrying clipboards and passing petitions? Do they envision an out-of-control hobbyist or a single mother taking down a drunk in a bar? I suspect that it depends on where they stand themselves. — Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Why you fool, it's the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything. — C.S. Lewis

It was that reader that she'd found in Mama's trunk. At the schoolhouse they had McGuffey, good lessons about good boys and girls. But Meggie had found the worn, faded book of fairy tales. They had been much more interesting than the stern admonitions of McGuffey. And her imagination had taken flight. Fanciful, that's what her father had called it. And when she'd read about Rapunzel, she'd decided that none of the local boys would ever do. A real prince was coming up the mountain for Meggie Best someday. She was sure of it. Unfortunately, this morning she'd thought that he'd arrived. — Pamela Morsi

You are fond of history! And so are Mr. Allen and my father; and I have two brothers who do not dislike it. So many instances within my small circle of friends is remarkable! At this rate, I shall not pity the writers of history any longer. If people like to read their books, it is all very well, but to be at so much trouble in filling great volumes, which, as I used to think, nobody would willingly ever look into, to be labouring only for the torment of little boys and girls, always struck me as a hard fate; and though I know it is all very right and necessary, I have often wondered at the person's courage that could sit down on purpose to do it. — Jane Austen

My phone beeped. I took it from my handbag and saw
a text message from Dixie.
It read: that man is sizzling HOT HOT HOT!!!!
truth! I texted back.
omg! his accent! his body! im in lurv
i noticed!
hes a bilf
wtf???
boss id like 2 fuk!
I snorted out loud with laughter.
Heller flicked his cold eyes to me.
I wrote: norty girl!
ooh! does he like norty asian girls?
Another involuntary snort from me.
"Ms Chalmers," he warned.
gotta go. my new daddys strict, I texted.
spankz for u 2nite!
lolz! only if im lucky! c u soon xx
- heller 1 — J.D. Nixon

On this particular autumn night, only the prospect of another solitary evening lies before her. She will fry her chop and read herself to sleep, no doubt with a tale of wizardry and romance. Then, in dreams that strike even her as trite, Miss Dark will go adventuring in chain mail and silk. Tomorrow morning she will wake up alone, and do it all again. Poor Judy Dark! Poor little librarians of the world, those girls, secretly lovely, their looks marred forever by the cruelty of a pair of big black eyeglasses! — Michael Chabon

They've been lying from the start. From the first time we read the words 'once upon a time,' we're fed the idea that these girls - these gorgeous, demure, singing-with-the-wildlife girls - get a happy ending. And I get it. Poor thing had to do some chores around the house, fine. But the idea that she needs a magic old lady to come down and skim off the dirt so the prince will see her beauty? That's ridiculous. Maybe she should have been working on her lockpicking skills instead of serenading squirrels. She could have busted out, hitched a ride to the castle, and impressed the prince with her safe-cracking prowess. Sorry, magic-fairy lady. She didn't need your help. — Kelsey Macke

BERLIN, September 27 A motorized division rolled through the city's streets just at dusk this evening in the direction of the Czech frontier. I went out to the corner of the Linden where the column was turning down the Wilhelmstrasse, expecting to see a tremendous demonstration. I pictured the scenes I had read of in 1914 when the cheering throngs on this same street tossed flowers at the marching soldiers, and the girls ran up and kissed them. The hour was undoubtedly chosen today to catch the hundreds of thousands of Berliners pouring out of their offices at the end of the day's work. But they ducked into the subways, refused to look on, and the handful that did stood at the curb in utter silence unable to find a word of cheer for the flower of their youth going away to the glorious war. It has been the most striking demonstration against war I've ever seen. Hitler himself reported furious. — William L. Shirer

I'm definitely very interested in doing female narrators that aren't typically feminine or emotional or soft - especially teenage girls - because I have such a hard time relating to so many of them that I read. They feel psychologically cuter to me than I ever was. — Andrea Seigel

Teenage girls today need strong, positive role models that can show them how to be independent thinkers and confident decision-makers. Dana is proud and self-confident, which is good, but she does not always make wise decisions. Rather than make her a super woman, I balanced her with difficult situations that could have been handled better. Her strength, however, shines through. This way, a young woman can read the book, discuss Dana's actions, and reflect on the decision-making in her own life. — Sharon M. Draper

?-: Yes, I must say, that part distressed me a bit. I had no idea girls could do that ...
(JUNE and RUTH look at him.)
RUTH: Do what, exactly?
?-: Be nude. I thought they just spontaneously combusted or something if they even tried taking off their sweaters.
JUNE: But, how did you think we bathed?
?-: I just assumed you just never got dirty, with the exception of your hair. You know, cause girls are always washing their hair ...
JUNE: But this is ridiculous. How did you think sex happened?
?-: To be honest, I'd never really thought about sex. Oh, dear ... Am I going to have to do that someday? Are we? I need to read up on this.
(He takes out a memorandum and begins scribbling.) — Benjamin R. Smith

It had always been my habit-- privately I felt it to be an ecstasy-- to enter, as into a mysterious vault, any public library. I was drawn to books that had been read before, novels that girls like myself had cradled and cherished. In my mind-- I suppose in my isolation-- I seized on all those previous readers, and everyone who would read after me, as phantom companions and secret friends. — Cynthia Ozick

There wasn't even enough meat to make proper fun of [ ... ] I keep waiting for somebody else to come on TV, maybe a cabinet member, to read the real speech, the one that tells us ... I dunno ... stuff. Seriously, sorority girls have done the Walk of Shame home from frat parties feeling more satisfied. — Stephen Green

-why had she found the story so absorbing? Of course it was quite possible she hadn't. Maybe she merely preferred a novel
any novel
to reading a newspaper or chatting with the girls she worked with all day. And maybe she always read like that
with an air of having surrendered totally to a spell. — James Hilton

It wasn't ass-screaming Beaker, though. It was fourteen girls in matching, form fitting sweats, all of which read RIDGE CHEERLEADING on the butt. (A form of ass-screaming, I suppose.) Each had her name on the back of her sleek warm-up fleece. They clustered around the snack bar, yelling at the top of their lungs. I really hoped and prayed that they wouldn't all say "Oh my God!" at once, but my prayers were not heard, maybe because God was busy listening to all of them. — Maureen Johnson

In the library
I search for a good book.
We have many books,
says Mrs. Rose, the librarian,
and ALL of them are good.
Of course she says that. It's her job.
But do I want to read about
Trucks
Trains and
Transport?
Or even
Horses
Houses and
Hyenas?

In the fiction corner
there are pink boks
full of princesses
and girls who want to be princesses
and black books
about bad boys
and brave boys
and brawny boys.

Where is the book
about a girl
whose poems don't rhyme
and whose Granny is fading?
Pearl, says Mrs. Rose, the bell has rung.

I go back to class
empty-handed
empty headed
empty-hearted. — Sally Murphy

I mean, I don't know much about the Civil War, but whenever I think of that time - I mean, ever since Gone With the Wind I've had these fantasies about those generals, those gorgeous young Southern generals with their tawny mustaches and beards, and hair in ringlets, on horseback. And those beautiful girls in crinoline and pantalettes. You would never know that they ever fucked, from all you're able to read." She paused and squeezed my hand. "I mean, doesn't it just do something to you to think of one of those ravishing girls with that crinoline all in a fabulous tangle, and one of those gorgeous young officers - I mean, both of them fucking like crazy?"
"Oh yes," I said with a shiver, "oh yes, it does. It enlarges one's sense of history. — William Styron

This is a woman who didn't want her viewpoints challenged, nor to see the views of the half of the world that comprises men. Her assumption is that all male authors are sexist and that their books distort the views of women....that's bigoted and despicable: the form of feminism that sees men as the enemy from the outset, and seeks to reinforce that prejudice by reading only books that keep her in her safe space.....The future, in both life and books, is men and women together, with a mutual understanding that can come only from learning about each other's thoughts. [About Caitlin Moran's sexist statement that girls shouldn't read any books written by men.] — Jerry Coyne

I always read that men don't like intelligent girls, but I've always found the reverse. — Mary Wesley

You feel well, Ali? You have a very faraway look on your face, beta,' my dad said. 'Like you have left your heart behind.'

He fixed me with eyes as liquid black as mine and for a moment I felt exposed, like he could see right through me. That irrational childhood thought that he could read my mind maybe.

'What nonsense, his heart is here with his mother and his family. Tell him, Ali,' my mother said.

'Begum, this generation of boys and girls, you know how they are.' My dad never said my mother's name; she was always Begum, the generic term for 'wife'. — Ruth Ahmed

I think as women we've always been very used to growing up reading and identifying with male protagonists, especially in fantasy. There's a saying in publishing that girls will read about boys, but boys will only read about boys, and it's important to give women strong heroines. — Cassandra Clare

Item, I've read that there's not a single virgin to be found in your country," said the statesman.
"Where might you have read this?" asked the Professor Antiquitatum.
"The good auctor Blefken says this."
"I wonder if the good auctor might not have misread his sources," said Arnaeus. "The best auctores tell us that Icelandic girls remain chaste virgins up until they've had their seventh child, Your Benevolence. — Halldor Laxness

Ohh,' said the girl with a sad tilt of her head.
It was a response Sejal would hear a lot in the following weeks and which she would eventully come to understand meant, 'Ohh, India, that must be so hard for you, and I know because I read this book over the summer called The Fig Tree (which is actually set in Pakistan but I don't realize there's a difference) about a girl whose parents sell her to a sandal maker because everyone's poor and they don't care about girls there, and I bet that's why you're in our country even, and now everyone's probably being mean to you just because of 9/11, but not me although I'll still be watching you a little too closely on the bus later because what if you're just here to kill Americans?'
There was a lot of information encoded in that one vowel sound, so Sejal missed most of it at first. — Adam Rex

She read all sorts of things: travels, and sermons, and old magazines. Nothing was so dull that she couldn't get through with it. Anything really interesting absorbed her so that she never knew what was going on about her. The little girls to whose houses she went visiting had found this out, and always hid away their story-books when she was expected to tea. If they didn't do this, she was sure to pick one up and plunge in, and then it was no use to call her, or tug at her dress, for she neither saw nor heard anything more, till it was time to go home. — Susan Coolidge

Romeo and Juliet"

The world is full of girls! Of all different kinds and shapes and sizes. They're all big question marks, incognito and unknown. They're a page in a book that's never been written or perhaps yet read. They're a title that's never been chosen, a language that's never been understood. Yet perhaps a treasure that hasn't been discovered.

Will any of this ever be revealed? That is even a bigger question mark. Yet, adventurous men, the brave and the naive ones, still pursue their endeavor toward their unknown dreams.

Will there ever be another Romeo and Juliet?
Or are we all Romeos and Juliets at the end? — Mauro Lannini

I remember the first time I read Freud, I was 25 or 30, and I was expecting it to be about the Oedipus complex. But what I actually discovered confirmed my own common experience, that you also had little boys who loved their fathers and little girls who loved their mothers. — Arnaud Desplechin

One day, in the very early months of the project, I read several entries in a single week from girls who had been subjected to leering and shouting from men in the street while walking home from school in their uniforms. Dismayed, I posted a question on Twitter: Surely, I asked, this couldn't be a common occurrence? By the end of the day, a deluge of hundreds of tweets had confirmed that the experience was not only common but almost ubiquitous. — Laura Bates

It has been said that when we pray, we speak to God; when we read, He speaks to us. Keeping this in mind, look for more in good books than entertainment. You will find in these books much that applies to you, and even in good novels, you will find many points that can help you become a finer person and a better Christian. — William A. Carroll

He read me another poem, and another one - and he explained the true history of poetry, which is a kind of secret, a magic known only to wise men. Mr. Premier, I won't be saying anything new if I say that the history of the world is the history of a ten-thousand-year war of brains between the rich and the poor. Each side is eternally trying to hoodwink the other side: and it has been this way since the start of time. The poor win a few battles (the peeing in the potted plants, the kicking of the pet dogs, etc.) but of course the rich have won the war for ten thousand years. That's why, on day, some wise men, out of compassion for the poor, left them signs and symbols in poems, which appear to be about roses and pretty girls and things like that, but when understood correctly spill out secrets that allow the poorest man on earth to conclude the ten-thousand-year-old brain-war on terms favorable to himself. — Aravind Adiga

You know, they never talk about this part of owning a sword in books." "Yeah, and girls don't menstruate in books either." Donovan gaped at me. I grinned back at him. "What? It's true! Ever read a romance novel? Talk about unrealistic! That whole vampire boyfriend thing would be over the second she started getting her period. — Elizabeth A. Reeves

I've grown up with girls that are like Precious. I've grown up with people that are like everyone that I read about in that book. And so years later, when I was given the role, I just felt a huge responsibility to show the reality of that situation and to show that we're not making it up. — Gabourey Sidibe

I went to a strict elementary school with nuns, and uniforms that I'm pretty sure were made out of sandpaper. It was an academic, sports-oriented place. I liked to read, and wanted to act, and didn't try out for volleyball. I was weird. The other girls would dip my hair in ink and stuff. — Zosia Mamet

Girls with their legs crossed, girls with their legs not crossed, girls with terrific legs, girls with lousy legs, girls that looked like swell girls, girls that looked like they'd be bitches if you knew them. It was really nice sightseeing, if you know what I mean. In a way, it was sort of depressing, too, because you kept wondering what the hell would happen to all of them. When they got out of school and college, I mean. You figured most of them would probably marry dopey guys. Guys that always talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their goddam cars. Guys that get sore and childish as hell if you beat them at golf, or even just some stupid game like ping-pong. Guys that are very mean. Guys that never read books. Guys that are very boring - But I have to be careful about that. I mean about calling certain guys bores. I don't understand boring guys. I really don't. — J.D. Salinger

While they read these stories, moreover - and this is a comforting thought for those who believe that the best way for anyone to become a lover of real literature is to be exposed to it early and often - boys and girls are not only gratifying their love for a
stirring tale, they are making the acquaintance of the great story-tellers of the past, taking them into their lives as companions. This early contact gives children an experience which will keep their horizon in after life from being entirely circumscribed by the mediocre and ephemeral. If a boy has sailed the wine dark Aegean, or climbed a height whence he could watch Roland's last heroic stand in the Pass of Roncevaux, some gleam remains, and there is far less likelihood that his adult reading will be entirely commonplace. — Anne Thaxter Eaton

I should have never taught you girls to read! I suspect you have been reading the Bible behind my back-that is enough to fill a girl's head with folly? — Anne Fortier

Boys and girls, And women, that would groan to see a child Pull off an insect's leg, all read of war, The best amusement for our morning meal. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Margaret ... you must know that you could never change your own life. You are a girl: girls have no choice. You could never even choose your own husband: you are of the royal family. A husband would always have been chosen for you. It is forbidden for one of royal blood to marry their own choice. You know this too. And finally, you are of the House of Lancaster. You cannot choose your allegiance. You have to serve your house, your family, and your husband. I have allowed you to dream, and I have allowed you to read, but the time has come to put aside silly stories and silly dreams and do your duty. — Philippa Gregory

I was taught to do math and read at the same time. So you're six years old, you're reading 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' and it becomes rapidly obvious that there are only two kinds of men in the world: dwarves and Prince Charmings. And the odds are seven is to one against your finding the prince. That's why little girls don't do math. — Emily Levine

In the same way that so many people read 'Harry Potter' and went to see 'Harry Potter,' just because a movie is about a kid, doesn't mean it's for kids, and just because a movie is about a girl, doesn't mean it's for girls. — Cassandra Clare

What is it, Master Calligrapher, that little girls do in the way that spiders weave?" sleeve asked primly.
The Calligrapher coughed, for his room was very dusty, and there was dust even on his eyelashes, and said: "It is right and proper," he said, "for a girl to read as many books as there are bricks in this city, and then, when she is finished, to begin to write new ones which are made out of the old ones, as this city is made of those stones. — Catherynne M Valente

Most of the people you read about being turned meet vamps in clubs or over the Internet ... Ew, did you ... ?"
"Yes, I met a vampire on the Internet, went to his evil love den, and let him turn me, because I'm that brainless. — Molly Harper

Sometimes it's moments like that, real complicated moments, absorbing moments, that make you realize that even hard times have things in them that make you feel alive. And then there's music, and girls, and drugs, and homeless people who've read Pauline Kael, and wah-wah pedals, and English potato chip flavors, and I haven't even read Martin Chuzzlewit yet ... There's plenty out there. — Nick Hornby

I am fascinated that no one I have read seems to have noticed that the literature on Picasso continually turns grown-up women into girls. — Siri Hustvedt

Umm, why is it that we don't have any of this in a book? So we could study?" There was a hint of irritation in her voice. Silvia shook her head. "Dear girls, history isn't something you study. It's something you should just know." Marlee turned to me and whispered, "But clearly we don't." She smiled at her own joke, and then focused again on Silvia. I thought about that, how we all knew different things or had to guess at the truth. Why weren't we given history books? I remembered a few years ago when I went into Mom and Dad's room, since Mom said I could choose what I wanted to read for English. As I went through my options, I spotted a thick, ratty book in the back corner and pulled it out. It was a U.S. history book. Dad came in a few minutes later, saw what I was reading, and said it was okay, so long as I never told anyone about it. When — Kiera Cass

There was an advertisement in the newspaper for a teaching position in a school with the worst reputation in town, with the sort of class that no qualified teacher with all the parts of her brain correctly screwed together would voluntarily face. It was attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder before attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder had been invented. "There's no hope for these boys and girls," the headmaster soberly explained in the interview. "This is not education, this is storage." Maybe Sonja understood how it felt to be described as such. The vacant position attracted only one applicant, and she got those boys and girls to read Shakespeare. — Fredrik Backman

It is with pain that I read of the dire effects of my book upon the minds of young girls. — Mary MacLane

It was common for my father to sit my sisters down and tell them things like, "I saw a girl working in the bank in town, and she was a girl just like you." My parents had never completed primary school. They couldn't speak English or even read that well. My parents only knew the language of numbers, buying and selling, but they wanted more for their kids. That's why my father had scraped the money together and kept Annie in school, despite the famine and other troubles. — William Kamkwamba

My cousin Helen, who is in her 90s now, was in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. She and a bunch of the girls in the ghetto had to do sewing each day. And if you were found with a book, it was an automatic death penalty. She had gotten hold of a copy of 'Gone With the Wind', and she would take three or four hours out of her sleeping time each night to read. And then, during the hour or so when they were sewing the next day, she would tell them all the story. These girls were risking certain death for a story. And when she told me that story herself, it actually made what I do feel more important. Because giving people stories is not a luxury. It's actually one of the things that you live and die for. — Neil Gaiman

For in Calormen, story-telling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you're taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay-writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays. — C.S. Lewis

A fun read that reminds single girls everywhere that it's fabulous to be single. — Plum Sykes

Meanwhile, as we read, two little girls slept as if couched on zephyrs on the south side of the parlor floor, in a room that had bunny wallpaper ... and a bookcase crammed with the collected Beatrix Potter. Snow White was in a youth bed and Rose Red was in a crib, and next to them was the little blue and white guest room that one of them would have one day. Because I recognize emotions only in retrospect, I didn't know that I was happy. As always, there was something nagging at my mind's corners. But I did know that I had all that it is proper in this world to wish for. — Mary Cantwell

I was going to go to bed early and maybe read for a little bit."
"Reading. Wow. Not sure I know many girls who do that."
Her brows rose. "Then you're hanging out with the wrong girls."
"No doubt. I most definitely have been ... in the past, but I've raised my standards a bit recently. — Cat Johnson

What you need is a chick from Camden,' Van Patten says, after recovering from McDermott's statement.
Oh great,' I say. 'Some chick who thinks it's okay to fuck her brother.'
Yeah, but they think AIDS is a new band from England,' Price points out.
Where's dinner?' Van Patten asks, absently studying the question scrawled on his napkin. 'Where the fuck are we going?'
It's really funny that girls think guys are concerned with that, with diseases and stuff,' Van Patten says, shaking his head.
I'm not gonna wear a fucking condom,' McDermott announces.
I have read this article I've Xeroxed,' Van Patten says, 'and it says our chances of catching that are like zero zero zero zero point half a decimal percentage or something, and this no matter what kind of scumbag, slutbucket, horndog chick we end up boffing.'
Guys just cannot get it.'
Well, not white guys. — Bret Easton Ellis

I told her if she really cared about me, then she'd let me do whatever I wanted for my birthday, just like Mom did when I was twelve."
"What happened when you were twelve?"
"Oh, Mom offered to take us all out for dinner - us girls, Dad was out of town - to celebrate, but I didn't want to. This book I'd been waiting for had just come out, and the only thing I wanted to do was read it all night."
"My God," I said, touching the top of her nose. "You're adorable."
She swatted me away. "Anyway, Carly and Zoe really wanted to go out so that they could score a meal, but Mom just said, 'It's her birthday. Let her do whatever she wants.'"
"Your mom is cool. — Richelle Mead

A child who believed in fairy tales. Not the silly Disney ones your mother read to you, but the ones with blood and thorns, with girls who knew that love could kill you just as often as it could set you free. — Jodi Picoult

I do feel that the boys are getting left out. Girls will read boys' books, but boys won't read girls' books. If you're writing for a girl, you've got most of the audience on your side anyway. — S.E. Hinton

Moaning about how his own brilliance disadvantaged him was not a recipe for popularity. Stanley was initially as isolated in high school as Shirley would be in Rochester: "miserably lonely, reading prodigiously, hating everyone, and wishing I had enough courage to talk to girls." One day a boy he recognized from class sat down next to him in the locker room. Stanley, trying to make conversation as he best knew how, asked his classmate if he read Poe. "No, I read very well, thank you," came the reply. Stanley responded huffily that he didn't think puns were very clever. "I don't either," said the other boy, "but they're something I can't help, like a harelip. — Ruth Franklin

I had this terrible feeling that every woman who knew anything about anything was tired of Sylvia Plath, tired of her blood and bees and the level of narcissistic self-pity required to compare her father to Hitler- but I'd been left behind. I hadn't gotten the highbrow girl-memo: Don't Read the Girls Who Cried Pain. — Leslie Jamison

Grover seemed to read my mind. "Listen," he said. "I don't know if your grandparents came on boats or if they were a bunch of farmers. But you've got to understand something about the old man. His folks weren't more than a few years from Wounded Knee. The government still shot people. It stole the kids, performed experiments on them, sterilized the little girls. If you made too much noise you just disappeared. That's just the way it was. You didn't make trouble." "Sounds like the Nazis," I said. Grover just shrugged. "I'm just trying to make you understand. This is a big thing he's doing. I'm telling you again, he's counting on you because you're the only white man he trusts. — Kent Nerburn

Who I think is actually doing great things for the appearance of women is that Kardashian girl. Kim Kardashian is giving an alternative. I don't know very much about her and I don't read articles, but just looking at the pictures you go, "Great! There's a girl with an ass, and that's fabulous. On behalf of all girls with asses, thank you." — Lucy Lawless

Massachusetts's poor laws required that boys be taught to write and girls to read.7 — Jill Lepore