Speed Reading Quotes & Sayings

There is an underlying rhythm to all text. Sentences crashing fall like the waves of the sea, and work unconsciously on the reader. Punctuation is the music of language. As a conductor can influence the experience of the song by manipulating its rhythm, so can punctuation influence the reading experience, bring out the best (or worst) in a text. By controlling the speed of a text, punctuation dictates how it should be read. A delicate world of punctuation lives just beneath the surface of your work, like a world of microorganisms living in a pond. They are missed by the naked eye, but if you use a microscope you will find a exist, and that the pond is, in fact, teeming with life. This book will teach you to become sensitive to this habitat. The more you do, the greater the likelihood of your crafting a finer work in every respect. Conversely the more you turn a blind eye, the greater the likelihood of your creating a cacophonous text and of your being misread. — Noah Lukeman

We must always look at things
from the point of view of eternity,
the college theologians used to insist,
from which, I imagine, we would all
appear to have speed lines trailing behind us
as we rush along the road of the world,
as we rush down the long tunnel of time-
the biker, of course, drunk on the wind,
but also the man reading by a fire ... — Billy Collins

I was in a job interview and I opened a book and started reading. Then I said to the guy 'Let me ask you a question. If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?' He said 'I don't know'. I said 'I don't want your job'. — Steven Wright

An hour and thirty-one minutes after launch, my pressure altimeter halts at 103,300 feet. At ground control the radar altimeters also have stopped-on readings of 102,800 feet, the figure that we later agree upon as the more reliable. It is 7 o'clock in the morning, and I have reached float altitude ... Though my stabilization chute opens at 96,000 feet, I accelerate for 6,000 feet more before hitting a peak of 614 miles an hour, nine-tenths the speed of sound at my altitude. — Joseph Kittinger

It can be dismaying, all the same, for a novelist to compare the slowness of the writing with the speed of the reading. Novels are read in a matter of days, even hours. A writer may labor for weeks over a particular passage that will have its effect on a reader for an instant - and that effect may be subliminal or barely noticed. — Graham Swift

I took a speed reading course and my speed shot up to 43 pages a minute, but my comprehension plummeted. — Brian Regan

And learning, for Musk, is simply the process of "downloading data and algorithms into your brain."3 Among his many frustrations with formal classroom learning is the "ridiculously slow download speed" of sitting in a classroom while a teacher explains something, and to this day, most of what he knows he's learned through reading. — Tim Urban

With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it's essential to slow down and read every word. Because one important thing that can be learned by reading slowly is the seemingly obvious but oddly underappreciated fact that language is the medium we use in much the same way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint. I realize it may seem obvious, but it's surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted. — Francine Prose

Bast had insisted we keep everyone up-to-speed on the regular subjects like math and reading, although she did sometimes add her own elective courses, such as Advanced Cat Grooming, or Napping. There was a waiting list to get into Napping. — Rick Riordan

So let us praise the distinctive pleasures of re-reading: that particular shiver of anticipation as you sink into a beloved, familiar text; the surprise and wonder when a book that had told one tale now turns and tells another; the thrill when a book long closed reveals a new door with which to enter. In our tech-obsessed, speed-obsessed, throw-away culture let us be truly subversive and praise instead the virtues of a long, slow relationship with a printed book unfolding over many years, a relationship that includes its weight in our hands and its dusty presence on our shelves. In an age that prizes novelty, irony, and youth, let us praise familiarity, passion, and knowledge accrued through the passage of time. As we age, as we change, as our lives change around us, we bring different versions of ourselves to each encounter with our most cherished texts. Some books grow better, others wither and fade away, but they never stay static. — Terri Windling

There are lots of superheroes with different superpowers, and some of them are big and flashy, like super strength and super speed, and molecular restructuring, and force fields. But these abilities are really not so different from the superpower stuff that old Jiko could do, like moving superslow, or reading people's minds, or appearing in doorways, or making people feel okay about themselves by just being there. — Ruth Ozeki

One constant is that, to achieve all the purposes of reading, the desideratum must be the ability to read different things at different - appropriate - speeds, not everything at the greatest possible speed. As Pascal observed three hundred years ago, "When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing." Since — Mortimer J. Adler

I sense that I am dawdling in this narrative, having already reached my eighth roll of Hieratica, and need to speed it up a little, else either I shall die on the job, or you will be worn out reading. — Robert Harris

One trouble with developing speed reading skills is that by the time you realize a book is boring you've already finished it. — Franklin P. Jones

I started reading and talking and interviewing nutritionists and a thread was starting to form for me which is - a protein digests in a different rate of speed than a carbohydrate. — Suzanne Somers

Pokemon to choose? According to some reviews, Mudkip is suggested to be the best. When evolved to Swampert, it will have abilities of Surf, Strength and Waterfall while Blaziken and Sceptile will only have Cut and Strength. By level 52, Swampert will be able to learn Earthquake which is a pretty strong move for battles. Speed up battles and texts Since Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire is a big game as you could probably see and there will be a lot of battles and talks. If you will spend most of your time watching the battles and reading the texts, this will take your forever to accomplish things in the game. — Maverick Guides

Turn, Liz said, trying not to hide her impatience at being forced to read at non-speed-of-light pace. — Ally Carter

I just got out of the hospital. I was in a speed reading accident. I hit a book mark and flew across the room. — Steven Wright

Great speed in reading is a dubious achievement; it is of value only if what you have to read is not worth reading. — Mortimer J. Adler

Adieu, sucky speed-reading critics and reviewers!"
Terry Dare, gothic author in Blatty's book "Elsewhere", just before he crosses over. — William Peter Blatty

At 42,000' in approximately level flight, a third cylinder was turned on. Acceleration was rapid and speed increased to .98 Mach. The needle of the machmeter fluctuated at this reading momentarily, then passed off the scale. Assuming that the off-scale reading remained linear, it is estimated that 1.05 Mach was attained at this time. — Chuck Yeager

The secret to speed-reading is moving your lips faster. — Charles M. Schulz

Teaching literature is teaching how to read. How to notice things in a text that a speed-reading culture is trained to disregard, overcome, edit out, or explain away; how to read what the language is doing, not guess what the author was thinking; how to take evidence from a page, not seek a reality to substitute for it. — Barbara Johnson

I read 'War and Peace' in 20 minutes," he says. "It's about Russia. — Woody Allen

Why do we speak of memory and speed reading? Why is there this need to learn how to learn? The reason is simple. Because at none of us, at school, taught us to learn quickly; they have given us only the contents, making us understand that the content is everything, but they don't have told how to study them. They haven't ever taught to speak in public, but in the school days it happened to do this, just think of the classic query where the audience had as a teacher and class of 20-30 students. — Robert James

The important thing is not so much to read fast, as to read each book at the speed it deserves. It is as regrettable to spend too much time on some books as it is to read others too quickly. There are books you know well, just from flicking through them, others you only grasp at second or third reading, and others again which will last you a lifetime. — Jacques Bonnet

If time heals all wounds, and a book can hold a person's entire life, then you can speed up the process with a pulp time warp. — Deb Caletti

I do think digital media encourages speed-reading, which can be fine if one is simply seeking information. But a serious novel or work of history or volume of poetry is an experience one should savor, take time over. — Michael Dirda

When you read a manuscript that has been damaged by water, fire, light or just the passing of the years, your eye needs to study not just the shape of the letters but other marks of production. The speed of the pen. The pressure of the hand on the page. Breaks and releases in the flow. You must relax. Think of nothing. Until you wake into a dream where you are at once a pen flying of vellum and the vellum itself with the touch of ink tickling your surface. Then you can read it. The intention of the writer, his thoughts, his hesitations, his longings and his meaning. You can read as clearly as if you were the very candlelight illuminating the page as the pen speeds over it. — Diane Setterfield

Read him slowly, dear girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. He is a writer who used pen and ink. He looked up from the page a lot, I believe, stared through his window and listened to birds, as most writers who are alone do. Some do not know the names of birds, though he did. Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen. What an appalling, barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise. — Michael Ondaatje

The early development of speed reading can be traced to the beginning of the (20th) century, when the publication explosion swamped readers with more than they could possibly handle at normal reading rates. — Tony Buzan

For Our Purposes, I define "reading" as looking at printed words and getting enough meaning from them to satisfy your purpose. — Peter Kump

One of the saddest things about publishing is how quickly it ages what it touches. The frenzy involved in getting books on shelves, and in putting the word out that they're there, moves at a speed that is not the speed of writing, let alone of reading. — Walter Kirn

You will get little or nothing from the printed page if you bring it nothing but your eye. — Walter B. Pitkin

Sometimes you wish to escape to another part of the book.
You stop reading and riffle the pages, catching sight of the story as it races ahead, not above the world but through it, through forests and complications, the chaos of intentions and cities.
As you near the last few pages you are hurtling through the book at increasing speed, until all is a blur of restlessness, and then suddenly your thumb loses its grip and you sail out of the story and back into yourself. The book is once again a fragile vessel of cloth and paper. You have gone everywhere and nowhere. — Thomas Wharton

I'm not a speed reader. I'm a speed understander. — Isaac Asimov

(Years of work are required before the cerebral mechanisms for reading, if regularly oiled, finally become unconscious.-Stanislas Dehaene.) The important thing is not so much to read fast, as to read each book at the speed it deserves. It is as regrettable to spend too much time on some books as it to read others too quickly. There are books you know well, just from flicking through them, others you only grasp at second or third reading, and others again will will last you a lifetime. — Jacques Bonnet

I remember being taught to read at a very early age. Like creepy young. I remember being in the crib, reading. My parents were very impressed. My reading speed, comprehension and overall ability has remained at that level ever since. — J.J. Abrams

I took a course in speed reading. Then I got Reader's Digest on microfilm. By the time I got the machine set up, I was done. — Steven Wright

Reading builds a scaffold of vocabulary and word associations that facilitate learning new information.

It improves your brain processing speed for text because you have more rapid comprehension. — Peter Rogers

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia. — Woody Allen

The art of reading is the art of adopting the pace the author has set. Some books are fast and some are slow, but no book can be understood if it is taken at the wrong speed. — Mark Van Doren