Reading For School Quotes & Sayings

Both of these students- both high school seniors both old enough to vote in the upcoming election- thought 'Al' Qaeda was a person. At that time the United States had been at war for five and a half years and here were two students two young adults leaving the educational system who had never heard of al Qaeda. Both by the way had passed the multiple-choice reading section of the state's high school exit exam. — Kelly Gallagher

Sometimes Joyce is hilarious. I read Finnegans Wake after graduate school and I had the great good fortune of reading it without any help. I don't know if I read it right, but it was hilarious! I laughed constantly! I didn't know what was going on for whole blocks but it didn't matter because I wasn't going to be graded on it. I think the reason why everyone still has so much fun with Shakespeare is because he didn't have any literary critic. He was just doing it; and there were no reviews except for people throwing stuff on stage. He could just do it. — Toni Morrison

He steps to the side to make room for me, but even so, his shoulders take up half my space. Not that I mind. Men are my Achilles heel, my Kryptonite. I love their smell, their taste, the sounds they make when they come inside of me. But between a full-time job, law school, hours of reading cases, and study groups, I barely have time to sleep, much less date. — Magda Alexander

Trapped on a school bus for an hour each morning and each evening, she devoured book after book. She explored a hundred worlds, indifferent to her peers and the passing of the universe. — Danika Stone

At a normal high school, having class outside on a gorgeous May day is usually pretty awesome. It means sitting in the sunshine, maybe reading some poetry, letting the breeze blow through your hair ... At Hecate Hall, a.k.a. Juvie for Monsters, it meant I was getting thrown in the pond. — Rachel Hawkins

I remember thinking that people were crazy for reading the same book more than once, but I now have a new-found appreciation for the re-discovery of literature. The lessons we learned from books in the school curriculum are reinvented and updated when we read as adults. — Rachel Nichols

What this means is that it is entirely possible these days for someone to have been raised in a religion and to have taken philosophy courses in college but still to be lacking a philosophy of life. (Indeed, this is the situation in which most of my students find themselves.) What, then, should those seeking a philosophy of life do? Perhaps their best option is to create for themselves a virtual school of philosophy by reading the works of the philosophers who ran the ancient schools. This, at any rate, is what, in the following pages, I will be encouraging readers to do. I — William B. Irvine

Organizing the books was a fun afternoon. We decided to put the thick hardback books, mostly intro. to philosophy textbooks and Norton literature anthologies, on the top shelves where they looked good but stayed out of reach since there's no reason for opening them ever again. Then we went by genre: mysteries, cozies, modernists, mountains, sci-fi, beloved childhood volumes, books we bought abroad, books required in school we couldn't sell back, books bought for us we'll read soon, books bought for us we have no intention of reading, books we want to read but are too long for a commitment with our current schedules...We're not really done with this organization, and I doubt we ever will be, but that's one great part about it. — Joshua Isard

It is easy to imagine a world where not only can few people read, few need to or want to. Serious reading can become the preserve of a s mall group of specialists, just as shoe-making or farming is for us. Think how much time would be saved. We send children to school and they spend most of their time learning to read and then, when they leave, they never pick up another book for the rest of their lives. Reading is only important if there is something worthwhile to read. Most of it is ephemeral. That means an oral culture of tales told and remembered. People can be immensely sophisticated in thought and understanding without much writing. — Iain Pears

One week I was in school and the next I'm at Leavesden Studios in Dumbledore's office reading scenes with Daniel Radcliffe. Weird. And terrifying for such a huge 'Harry Potter' fan. — Evanna Lynch

Because my graduate academic training at law school was not one that included most of the intellectual traditions I find useful for understanding the conditions and problems that most concern me - anti-colonial theories, Foucault, critical disability studies, prison studies and the like are rarely seen in standard US Law School curricula, where students are still fighting on many campuses to get a single class on race or poverty offered - I developed most of my thinking about these topics through activist reading groups and collaborative writing projects with other activist scholars. — Dean Spade

Not long after the book came out I found myself being driven to a meeting
by a professor of electrical engineering in the graduate school I of MIT. He said that after reading the book he realized that his graduate students were using on him, and had used for the ten years and more he had been teaching there, all the evasive strategies I described in the book - mumble, guess-and-look, take a wild guess and see what happens, get the teacher to answer his own questions, etc.
But as I later realized, these are the games that all humans play when others
are sitting in judgment on them. — John Holt

I am charmed by the idea that there is an activity known as work and another as play, although even in grade school the distinction eluded me. I remember how full of hope I was sitting in first-period home room listening to the teacher divide up our activities into purposeful sections. I got a grip on her process, at last, by picturing it in the following way: A cow stands in clover. When she is milked, that is her work; when she is merely eating, that is her play. But the problem lay, then as now, in the realization that, in any case, she is standing in clover. Not a handsome or elegant analogy, but it approximates for me the habit of reading - standing in a world of clover, the eating of which is occasionally utilitarian, usually nourishing, because that's what one does — Toni Morrison

Dear teachers, please make reading and writing fun. Reading and writing shouldn't be a punishment while in school. I ask you to create and teach two electives: "Reading for Pleasure" and "Writing for Pleasure". — Gloria D. Gonsalves

The people are supposed to read books in these times of the School Board and, therefore, they do not need living speech. We are glad that the people should read, but much of what they read which is best worth reading was first heard from the pulpit! We know of no rivalry between the printed word and the preached Word - it is often the same thing. But I reckon that the most of you who have been converted to God will say that it was not what you read, but what you heard which was used of the Holy Spirit for your conversion! When heart speaks to heart with accents of emotion, it is somehow different from the paper. Some Brothers read their sermons and I do not condemn them, but I know that most of the people feel a kind of chill creeping over them as they hear the leaves rustle. It may be a prejudice, but I know that nine out of 10 are numbed by the foolscap for the reading. — Anonymous

The fact is that our kids aren't reading books - or frankly, much of anything lately. Schools are under funded, some schools even closing their libraries. Parents have to realize that it's their job, and not the school's job, to get kids into the habit of reading for fun. — James Patterson

I hadn't learned to read by third grade, which wasn't unusual for some kids. I knew something was wrong because I couldn't see or understand the words the way the other kids did. I wasn't the least bit bothered - until I was sent back to the second-grade classroom for reading help after school. — Barbara Corcoran

What's the matter?" asked the teacher, seeing her bewildered fact.

"Why - why," said Elizabeth Ann, "I don't know what I am at all. If I'm second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third-grade spelling, what grade am I?"

The teacher laughed at the turn of her phrase. "you aren't any grade at all, no matter where you are in school. You're just yourself, aren't you? What difference does it make what grade you're in! And what's the use of your reading little baby things too easy for you just because you don't know your multiplication table? — Dorothy Canfield

I found that the breakthroughs for me, as I went through school, came through sexuality, explorations of consciousness, reading, loving, friends, time in nature, and through psychedelic experiences. — Frederick Lenz

Uncontrollable consumerism has become a watchword of our culture despite regular and compelling calls for its end. The United States has more malls than high schools; Americans spend more time shopping than reading ... Some of the most insightful writing about the American character over the nation's history has been about neither freedom nor democracy but about the crazed impulse to acquire things. — Anna Quindlen

"I always read everything when I was a kid-and I do mean everything, from Nancy Drew to Dickens to my dad's John D. MacDonald-but then I went to regular school and the English teachers started telling me to read 'real' books, so I tried. And you know, I kinda went off reading for a while. I had already been reading literary novels and the classics mixed in with whatever else, but-" She waved a hand. "So I went back to reading whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to-reading had been my greatest pleasure in all the world. I mean I never really watched all that much television, because we were moving around, never really had solid digs until I was thirteen, so reading was everything. — Barbara O'Neal

Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to Isaiah, will find it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions ever put together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and, except a short historical part, and a few sketches of history in the first two or three chapters, is one continued incoherent, bombastical rant, full of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of meaning; a school-boy would scarcely have been excusable for writing such stuff; it is (at least in translation) that kind of composition and false taste that is properly called prose run mad. — Thomas Paine

Stormy Weather is really wonderful - it ought to be required reading for everyone who is concerned about our planet's climate, beginning in every high school in the country. — Ross Gelbspan

We go to school to learn what books to read for the rest of our lives. — Robert Frost

As with any great literature, there are probably as many ways to read William Faulkner's writing as there are readers. There are hundreds of books devoted to interpretations of his novels, numerous biographies, and every year high school teachers and college professors guide their students through one or more of the novels. But after all is said and done, there are the books themselves, and the pleasure of reading them can be deep and lasting. The language Faulkner uses ranges from the poetically beautiful, nearly biblical to the coarse sounds of rough dialect. His characters linger in the mind, whether for their heroism or villainy, their stoicism or self-indulgence, their honesty or deceitfulness or self-deception, their wisdom or stupidity, their gentleness or cruelty. In short, like Shakespeare, William Faulkner understood what it means to be human. — William Faulkner

I am writing a treatise just now" said the badger, coughing diffidently to show that he was absolutely set on explaining it, "which is to point out why Man has become the master of the animals. Perhaps you would like to hear it? It's for my doctor's degree you know," he added hastily, before Wart could protest. He got few chances of reading his treatise to anybody, so he could not bear to let the opportunity slip by. — T.H. White

I read a lot of literary theory when I was in graduate school, especially about novels, and the best book I ever read about endings was Peter Brooks' 'Reading for the Plot. ' — Lev Grossman

He kissed me for a long moment, holding my shoulders, perhaps to keep me from pressing my whole body against his. Then he tried to lift my bag.
"My God," he said. "What happened?"
"I found out one may check out twenty books at a time from the school library. — Laura Whitcomb

When I realized I was having trouble reading, I was too embarrassed to ask for help. Some teachers believed in me, but I just wasn't focused on school - I was into the music and trying to please my dad. — Fantasia Barrino

I remember reading Dave Barry for the first time and being like oh my God I can't believe you can do this. Watching Mel Brooks and Monty Python and SNL and all that stuff really informed me as a writer and then at high school I started a satire magazine and the college like The Lampoon really introduced me to like you know a lot of very like-minded people who really wanted to like comedy was the center of their lives. — Nicholas Stoller

Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest. — John Taylor Gatto

The library was open for one hour after school let out. I hid there, looking at art books and reading poetry. — Lynda Barry

If I have a talent for making some fourth-grader who hates school and reading to hate it a little less, then I have to do the most with what I've been issued. — Brian P. Cleary

I grew up with 'Jane Eyre,' reading it at school, and it's one of those, I think, for a lot of women, a lot of girls, it's the iconic story and so many girls relate to Jane Eyre and her character. — Sally Hawkins

I live in gratitude to my parents for initiating me
and as early as I begged for it, without keeping me waiting
into knowledge of the word, into reading and spelling, by way of the alphabet. They taught it to me at home in time for me to begin to read before starting school.
My love for the alphabet, which endures, grew out of reciting it but, before that, out of seeing the letters on the page. In my own story books, before I could read them for myself I fell in love with various winding, enchanted-looking initials drawn by Walter Crane at the head of fairy tales. In "Once upon a time," an "o" had a rabbit running it as a treadmill, his feet upon flowers. When the day came years later for me to see the Book of Kells, all the wizardry of letter, initial, and word swept over me a thousand times, and the illumination, the gold, seemed a part of the world's beauty and holiness that had been there from the start. — Eudora Welty

P.S. Nothing personal, but I think this journal assignment is a waste of time. I know I have to do something to make up for all the work I'm missing at school, but I HATE busywork. And that's what this journal thing is. Half the teachers at school assign work they never read. When we get stupid assignments like that, I always write somewhere on my paper "blah blah blah" or "I bet you're not even reading this," are you? or "Give me a sign if you're reading this." They never are. — Kate Klise

When I was nine, I started reading Homer. I would get up at four o'clock in the morning, before I had to go to school, in third or fourth grade, and, for several hours, I would read 'The Iliad' or 'The Odyssey.' — Franz Wright

I didn't care for most of the books I was being asked to read in school. I started reading like crazy right after high school when I got a job in a mental hospital. I was working my way through college, and I did a lot of night shifts, and there was nothing to do. So I read like crazy, serious stuff, all the classics. — James Patterson

I subscribe to the online Urban Dictionary's definition of nerd: 'one whose IQ exceeds his weight'. I'm also keen on the same Urban Dictionary's definition of geek: 'the person you pick on in high school and wind up working for as an adult'. I happily proclaim myself a book nerd/reading geek and proud of it. — Malorie Blackman

But what is hard to understand is why the math and science gap launched a massive movement on behalf of girls, and yet a much larger gap in reading, writing, and school engagement created no comparable effort for boys. — Christina Hoff Sommers

And yet sometimes she worried about what those musty old books were doing to her. Some people majored in English to prepare for law school. Others became journalists. The smartest guy in the honors program, Adam Vogel, a child of academics, was planning on getting a Ph.D. and becoming an academic himself. That left a large contingent of people majoring in English by default. Because they weren't left-brained enough for science, because history was too dry, philosophy too difficult, geology too petroleum-oriented, and math too mathematical
because they weren't musical, artistic, financially motivated, or really all that smart, these people were pursuing university degrees doing something no different from what they'd done in first grade: reading stories. English was what people who didn't know what to major in majored in. — Jeffrey Eugenides

This, since junior school, had been virtually my only experience of women - as fantasy figures. Reading about women in fantasy novels had set me an even more unrealistic point of view. The Lord of the Rings doesn't help, with its sexless visions of elf maidens who may as well be speaking paintings, and neither does other fantasy literature, where women seem to exist solely to be rescued or slept with. The men they want are sorcerer-kings, doomed warriors or deadly assassins. I think the idea that women might fancy good-looking, well-adjusted men who are nice to them is too much for the average fantasy-head to bear. — Mark Barrowcliffe

frustration has flared up over the Common Core initiative, involving the implementation of national reading and maths standards for primary and secondary school children. The Gates Foundation played a central role in bringing the standards to fruition. Spending over $233 million to back the standards, the foundation dispersed money liberally to both conservative and progressive interest groups. The two major teachers' unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, each received large donations, as did the US Chamber of Commerce. Gates himself suggested that a benefit of the standards is that they open avenues towards increasing digital learning. In 2014, Microsoft announced it was partnering with Pearson to load Pearson's Common Core classroom material onto Microsoft's Surface tablet. Previously, the iPad was the classroom frontrunner; the Pearson partnership helps to make Microsoft more competitive. — Linsey McGoey

Because of the very nature of the world as it is today, our children receive in school a heavy load of scientific and analytic subjects, so it is in their reading for fun, for pleasure, that they must be guided into creativity. — Madeleine L'Engle

I think, for some children, your skills don't lie in written words. A lot of school is based around written words and how good you are at spelling or reading. From a young age, if you're told you can't spell or read very well, you're made to feel a bit stupid. — Erin Richards

One thing I like about writing is that it provides such a wonderful opportunity for confidential chats with readers. In the privacy of writing, and reading, we can discuss topics that are a little touchy, a bit embarrassing, and feel less alone in the process. Feeling consumed by memories from high school. Feeling wimpy. Feeling time-obsessed. Yearning for our fathers. Wishing we were taller, or shorter, or less average. To name just a few. — Ralph Keyes

I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret. — Audrey Niffenegger

To speak without shame about books we haven't read, we would thus do well to free ourselves of the oppressive image of cultural literacy without gaps, as transmitted and imposed by family and school, for we can strive toward this image for a lifetime without ever managing to coincide with it. — Pierre Bayard

Any man will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of; and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and classbooks, and when we leave school, the Little Reading, and story books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins. — Henry David Thoreau

We are in a great school, and we should be diligent to learn, and continue to store up the knowledge of heaven and of earth, and read good books, although I cannot say that I would recommend the reading of all books, for it is not all books which are good. Read good books, and extract from them wisdom and understanding as much as you possibly can, aided by the Spirit of God. (JD 12:124) — Brigham Young

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

SCHOOL BEGINS IN August this year. I live nearby, and so I walk and skip the bus. I read while I walk to school up the two hills, one sidewalk, a more or less straight line. I pretend the streets I pass through are empty. I have been reading about the Neutron Bomb. I want to be like that, radiant and deadly, a ghost of an impact, to pass through walls, to kill everyone, in flight among the empty houses, punching through molecules like a knife through a paper bag. See me. I am five feet and two inches tall. I am still thin, freckled, large eyes, small nose. My hair waves and grows long, to my neck. I pick flowers for my mother as I walk. The neighborhood kids call me Nature Boy. I want to die. Help — Alexander Chee

For Jefferson, William and Mary was largely about what university life is supposed to be about: reading books, enjoying the company of like-minded, and savoring teachers who seemed to be ambassadors from other, richer, writer worlds. Jefferson believed Williamsburg the finest school of manners and morals that ever existed in America. — Jon Meacham

Theatre aside, my penchant for the extended monologue began with my reading of Browning's dramatic monologues, in high school. My inclination to adopt the form for prose was confirmed by Richard Howard's book of dramatic monologues, Untitled Subjects. — Norman Lock

I want to point the way to something that should forever lure them, when the TV set is broken and the movie is over and the school bell has rung for the last time. — Bel Kaufman

In junior high school, I learned that I could be good at school. I remember liking the freedom to choose classes and the pleasure of learning and doing well. My perseverance and love of reading had somehow allowed me to overcome many disadvantages of dyslexia, and I read a lot of books for pleasure. — Carol W. Greider

My parents homeschooled my sister and me for many years. Why? Because the local school insisted that I, being three, should go to preschool, and my sister, being five, should go to kindergarten. The problem? You learn your alphabet in preschool, and I was already reading chapter books. — Adora Svitak

In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for? — John Irving

I'm not a good reader. I had to take remedial reading in school. I was a slow reader and therefore it's tough for me to stay interested in things long enough, I've read, probably, since college maybe 10 books, which is disgusting. — Bruce Dern

Meanwhile, time is one of our most scarce resources. At the moment, you are reading instead of working, playing with the dog, applying to law school, shopping for groceries, or having sex. Life is about trade-offs, and so is economics. — Charles Wheelan

We all love stories, even if they're not true. As we grow up, one of the ways we learn about the world is through the stories we hear. Some are about particular events and personalities within our personal circles of family and friends. Some are part of the larger cultures we belong to - the myths, fables, and fairy tales about our own ways of life that have captivated people for generations. In stories that are told often, the line between fact and myth can become so blurred that we easily mistake one for the other. This is true of a story that many people believe about education, even though it's not real and never really was. It goes like this: Young children go to elementary school mainly to learn the basic skills of reading, writing, and mathematics. These skills are essential so they can do well academically in high school. If they go on to higher education and graduate with a good degree, they'll find a well-paid job and the country will prosper too. — Ken Robinson

It is s shame that more people do not appreciate the value of "a good read". I was fortunate enough to have had elementary school teachers who would read to us while we were to put our heads down on the desk and visualize the story and characters. It set me up for a lifetime of enjoying reading.... — Linda Roberts

To be better equipped for the tests that the year will bring - read a textbook. To prepare for the tests that life will bring - read a book. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

She might even be your lovely school-teacher who is reading these words to you at this very moment. Look carefully at that teacher. Perhaps she is smiling at the absurdity of such a suggestion. Don't let that put you off. It could be part of cleverness.
I am not, of course, telling you for one second that your teacher actually is a witch. All I am saying is that she might be one. It is most unlikely. But
here comes the big "but"
not impossible. — Roald Dahl

Elementary and high school students will still be tested under the new law. There just won't be so much riding on the scores. Also the arts didn't disappear under the old law, No Child Left Behind. But, Christopher Woodside of the National Association for Music Education says with so much time spent testing math and reading, the arts suffered. — Elizabeth Blair Lee

Why were American kids consistently underestimated in math? In middle school, Kim and Tom had both decided that math was something you were either good at, or you weren't, and they weren't. Interestingly, that was not the kind of thing that most Americans said about reading. If you weren't good at reading, you could, most people assumed, get better through hard work and good teaching. But in the United States, math was, for some reason, considered more of an innate ability, like being double-jointed. — Amanda Ripley

The keys to life are running and reading. When you're running, there's a little person that talks to you and says, "Oh I'm tired. My lung's about to pop. I'm so hurt. There's no way I can possibly continue." You want to quit. If you learn how to defeat that person when you're running. You will how to not quit when things get hard in your life. For reading: there have been gazillions of people that have lived before all of us. There's no new problem you could have
with your parents, with school, with a bully. There's no new problem that someone hasn't already had and written about it in a book. — Will Smith

I never could read Foucault. I find philosophy tedious. All of my knowledge comes from reading novels and some history. I read Being and Nothingness and realized that I remembered absolutely nothing when I finished it. I used to go to the library every day and read every day for eight hours. I'd dropped out of high school and had to teach myself. I read Sartre without any background. I just forced myself and I learned nothing. — Michael Gira

I love, first of all, reading and discovering what the common perception is and then trying to figure out ... well, how does your life cross over into that character, or what's an angle on this that might challenge the status quo? It's just a great journey as well as an education. You're constantly being educated - it's like I'm back at school and making up for lost time. — Andy Serkis

Although reading the classics in Latin in school may be not as fulfilling as it would be at a more mature age, few scientists can afford the time for such diversion later in life. — George Andrew Olah

I had literary interests my whole life. I decided at the age of five I was going to be a writer. So I had done a great deal of reading. I suppose I was more at home in Greenwich Village than, say, any of classmates from Warsaw High School. But in any case, it was an overwhelming experience for me. It took me some time to begin to assimilate it. — Tom Robbins

I attended school regularly for three years. I learned to read and write. 'Lamb's Tales' from Shakespeare was my favourite reading matter. I stole, by finding, Palgrave's 'Golden Treasury.' These two books, and the 'Everyman' edition of John Keats, were my proudest and dearest possessions, my greatest wealth. — Peter Abrahams

Not exactly what the world was looking for, a musical on 'Don Quixote.' It was required reading in high school. — Mitch Leigh

I just stopped reading a lot of books. I mean, I read books that I have to read for school, but I don't actually pick up a book and read for fun. On my time off, I go to movies, hang out with friends, go shopping ... just little things. — Mark Indelicato

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

Remember that high school boy in Omaha who got 30 million for his cross-media-e-commerce-integration-thingamajig? It was plastered all over the news and on CNN. We could have come up with that, we all agreed, but we were too busy living our lives for such things. So now he's richer than Midas, and we're reading about his fortune in the Huffington Post and thinking he should spend some of it on zit cream. — Maya Sloan

Except for that stuff about the barnacle peckers that was some of the boringest shit I've heard since school got out." I couldn't even look at him. "Cheer up," he said. "I brought some real entertainment." He pulled a brittle copy of The Godfather from his backpack and started reading some scene that began on page twenty-seven - he knew the sexy page numbers by heart - in which some imaginary woman described how big this imaginary Sonny was to — Jim Lynch

For me, I was in school and I pushed myself to be a good student, just because that's the type of person I was, but I never had a connection to any of it. I don't think my brain functioned in a way that was at its height, when I was in school. I needed something like art to really value the way my mind works. I wasn't reaching my full potential by sitting in a classroom and reading from a book. My mind didn't work that way. — Misty Copeland

I just downloaded '1984' for my iPod, but I've read that before. It just hearkens back to the 'romance' of my high-school days. I really liked the space I was in when I was reading it. — Lupe Fiasco

The operation would be in a week...I didn't know if I would survive. How I longed to go back to reading! There was nowhere I longed to be more than the university campus. I was preparing for a master's on fantasy literature. I was interested in why the country's literature did not include this distinctive genre. I had this great passion for studying and writing, which they explained in my household with the story of the umbilical cord. When I was born, and at my father's request, my elder sister buried my umbilical cord in the courtyard of her primary school. My father attributed my {brother's} academic failure to the fact that my mother buried his umbilical cord in the garden of our house. — Hassan Blasim

My grandmother taught me to read before I went to school. I was reading the newspaper when I was five. And Grandpa taught me to do math and figure. They believed in living simply. Grandpa grew a garden, and Grandma canned food for the winter. They taught me to work and to love to learn new things. I wasn't really afraid or shy. — Carolyn Brown

Some children were lucky enough to have their Potter novels banned by witch-hunting school boards and micromanaging ministers. Is there any greater job than a book you're not allowed to read, a book you could go to hell for reading? — Ann Patchett

Reading is learning, but applying is also learning and the more important kind of learning at that. Our chief method is to learn warfare through warfare. A person who has had no opportunity to go to school can also learn warfare - he can learn through fighting in war. A revolutionary war is a mass undertaking; it is often not a matter of first learning and then doing, but of doing and then learning, for doing is itself learning. — Mao Zedong

The only thing that everyone needs to look out for is keeping the students reading through high school and thereafter. — Dave Eggers

When I graduated from high school I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library 3 days a week for 10 years. — Ray Bradbury

We believed we could prepare our kids for a more competitive world. And today, our younger students have earned the highest math and reading scores on record. Our high school graduation rate has hit an all-time high. And more Americans finish college than ever before. — Barack Obama

One of my passions is that children enjoy their time at school - and reading for pleasure can be an important part of that. — Charles Clarke

That year I was going to take you up in the Rockies. No more of that. We'll have to choose Old Flat Top because I don't want Violet getting all tired out with a long climb. And I don't want me getting all tired out either. The rest of you are tough enough." Grandfather looked up to see that every Alden was looking at him. The four shining faces answered him. There were four nods. "You do have the strangest ideas, Benny," said Jessie. "What put that into your head?" "Well," said Benny, "I've been reading about that place in school." "About Flat Top?" asked Violet. "Oh, you have, have you?" said Henry. "You chose Flat Top yourself?" "Right," said Benny. "I don't want to climb too much myself. I get lame." Mr. Alden said, "Well, my answer is yes. Old Flat Top is easy enough for all of us, and yet it is interesting all the way up. And we'll all be able to get a good rest on the smooth top." "Just like airplanes landing on an airplane carrier," said Benny. — Gertrude Chandler Warner

I'd love to go back to school for philosophy. I love philosophy, so I'm always reading philosophy books, annoying my girlfriend with that type of stuff. — Parker Young

The idea that students don't know how to write clearly and precisely is as old as school itself, probably, but lately it seems as if students no longer know how to read either. It is true on my campus and from I can gather, on many other college campuses. The students understand words, sentences
they are not illiterate
but they don't seem to grasp the reasons for reading. They seem baffled when asked to take two thoughts, connect them, and form something new. They read James Baldwin or Henry David Thoreau and their primary reaction seems to be, "Okay, now I've ready that. I'm done." As if the only goal in reading was to have looked at every word. — Dinty W. Moore

As an author the question I get asked the most is, "why do you write?" My knee jerk response is, "Because I love it," which is true, but not the whole truth.
So here is my revised response to that question; "I write for the thirteen year old me who hated reading and craved something different than the boring literature I was forced to read for school. I write to see something I want to read exist in the world. I write because it becomes unbearable to hold so many stories in my head without a way to express them, but most importantly, I write to be true to myself. — Day Parker

School did give me one of the greatest gifts of my life, though. I learned how to read, and for that I remain thankful. I would have died otherwise. As soon as I was able, I read, alone. Under the covers with a flashlight or in my corner of the attic - I sought solace in books. It was from books that I started to get an inkling of the kinds of assholes I was dealing with. I found allies too, in books, characters my age who were going through or had triumphed against the same bullshit. — Craig Ferguson

I meet a lot of readers who first encountered my work in school. And I can only assume there is another group who would run away very fast if they saw me coming, for exactly the same reason. Reading is individual, and not all tastes are alike. — Margaret Atwood

Education is neither writing on a blank slate nor allowing the child's nobility to come into flower. Rather, education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at. Children don't have to go to school to learn to walk, talk, recognize objects, or remember the personalities of their friends, even though these tasks are much harder than reading, adding, or remembering dates in history. They do have to go to school to learn written language, arithmetic, and science, because those bodies of knowledge and skill were invented too recently for any species-wide knack for them to have evolved. — Steven Pinker

Have a fake ID." I snatched it from his hands and smiled. "Where the heck did you get this?!" His eyes shifted back to Avery. "I know people who know people." "Burt Summerstone?" I asked, reading his name off the card. He took it back from me and slid it into his pocket. "It's not about the name, baby girl. It's about the date. I am officially a twenty-one-year-old high school student. And we are officially getting drunk and crossing that item off of your bucket list. Bow down, bitches." He pulled out a fake ID for me and I grinned. Summer Burtstone. How creative. — Brittainy C. Cherry

After a few drinks, my mom would recite her lines as Portia in 'The Merchant of Venice' from her high school play. But I first discovered Shakespeare properly when I was about five. I used to look for the most complicated books I could find and pretend to be reading them. I wanted people to think I was smart. — Chris Adrian

I wake on the fiction couch deeply hungover, my head cracking, with Rachel telling me to get up. She's holding my eyelids open like she used to do in high school when we'd stayed up all night talking and then slept through the morning alarm. 'Get. Up. Henry.'

'What time is it? I ask, batting off her hands.

'It's eleven. The shop's been open for an hour. There are customers asking for books I can't find. George is yelling at a guy called Martin Gamble who's here to help me create the database. And as a separate issue, Amy's waiting in the reading garden.'

'Amy's here?' I sit up and mess my hair around. 'How do I look?'

'I decline to answer on the grounds that technically you're my boss and I don't want to start my new job by insulting you.'

'Thank you,' I say. 'I appreciate that. — Cath Crowley

School is a terrible place, I have decided. There is nothing good about it except for math class. Everything else is a total waste of time. As I mentioned before I have done a lot of reading about prisons, and I notice that they always describe them as painted in very dull colors, and my school is also painted in these kinds of colors, with greenish lockers and brownish walls and grayish floors. Actually they recently fixed up one wing of the school, and now that part of the school is just the opposite - all the colors are really bright, with bright red and yellow lockers and blue doors and shiny white floors that are already all scuffed up. It's funny because I thought the other colors were terrible but these are much worse, because they make it seem like it's normal to be happy there when it isn't. — Dara Horn

School made us 'literate' but did not teach us to read for pleasure. — Ambeth R. Ocampo

Reading as an adult, for pleasure, is infinitely better than reading the stuff assigned to you back in school. You get to choose what you want to read. — Lisa Bloom