Well Read Books Quotes & Sayings

I wanted to possess all the books I had already read, as well as all those I had not - every book in the whole wide world, in other words. — Andy Miller

With fantasy, one often has to think of a well-loved series before narrowing the selection to a favourite book. So it is with Zelazny. I've read his 'Princes in Amber' books so often, I know them almost verbatim, so much so that I am now trying to forget them so I can return to them with renewed pleasure. — Neal Asher

A bran' new book is a beautiful thing, all promise and fresh pages, the neatly squared spine, the brisk sense of a journey beginning. But a well-worn book also has its pleasures, the soft caress and give of the paper's edges, the comfort, like an old shawl, of an oft-read story. — Lewis Buzbee

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

They
the books I mean, not the ladies of Technical Services, though maybe those ladies too
might have dreamed of a different life in a private home, beloved and displayed and well dressed and only occasionally, dreamily read, but they belonged to the city now and had to work for the common good. — Elizabeth McCracken

If you are reading in order to become a better reader, you cannot read just any book or article. You will not improve as a reader if all you read are books that are well within your capacity. You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as we have said, books that are over your head. Only books of that sort will make you stretch your mind. And unless you stretch, you will not learn. — Mortimer J. Adler

My books have done extremely well, I know. But I don't honestly feel much different from when I began to write. I still think we have a long way to go. I suppose my name means more in Nigeria today than it did five years ago. But I feel the job that literature should do in our community has not even started. It's not yet part of the life of the nation. We are still at the beginning. It's a big beginning, because now we are catching the next generation in the schools. When I was their age, I had nothing to read that had any relevance to my own environment. — Chinua Achebe

Every forest is a good library where you can find many books! Animals, trees, even rocks are the books of this mystic library! Read them to acquire their story! When you obtain the story of someone or something, you obtain their wisdom as well! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The second suggestion is to think as well as to read. I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as well cut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to drink. They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole object being motion. They will tell you how many books they have read in a year. Unless you give at least 45 minutes to careful, fatiguing reflection (it is an awful bore at first) upon what you are reading, your 90 minutes of a night are chiefly wasted. — Arnold Bennett

The four had come to an exciting decision" during the six months of the blockade threatened by the authorities, they would make the ruins a laboratory, a demonstration of how well and happily men could live with virtually no machines. They saw now the common man's wisdom in wrecking practically everything. That was the way to do it, and the hell with moderation!
"All right, so we'll heat our water and cook our food and light and warm our homes with wood fires," said Lasher.
"And walk wherever we're going," said Finnerty.
"And read books instead of watching television," said von Neumann. "The Renaissance comes to upstate New York! We'll rediscover the two greatest wonders of the world, the human mind and hand. — Kurt Vonnegut

The study found widespread dissatisfaction with our town's public library, and, when considering the facts, it's easy to see why. The public computers for Internet use are outdated and slow. The lending period of fourteen days is not nearly long enough to read lengthier books, given the busy schedule of all our lives. The fatality rate is also well above the national average for public libraries. — Joseph Fink

Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even sit up in bed till early dawn, trowing your whole tomorrow out of whack, simply to find out what happens to some people who, you know perfectly well, are made up. — Barbara Kingsolve

Whenever we talk about darkness and light, the terms seem so abstract that many consider the answers to be found in meditation and yoga, but I'm here to tell you that the answers are in the books you will never read, waiting all your life in the libraries you ignored and the bookstores you didn't visit. I'm here to tell you as well that you are your own Satan and evil can't possibly interfere more in your life than what you're already doing to yourself by remaining ignorant. Until you choose the light, darkness is your personal choice, and there's no reason to feel any empathy for you. — Robin Sacredfire

In 1966, after arriving in New York, I read two of Luria's books, Higher Cortical Functions in Man and Human Brain and Psychological Processes. The latter, which contained very full case histories of patients with frontal lobe damage, filled me with admiration [4].
[Footnote 4]. And fear, for as I read it, I thought, what place is there for me in the world? Luria has already seen, said, written, and thought anything I can ever say, or write, or think. I was so upset that I tore the book in two (I had to buy a new copy for the library, as well as a copy for myself). — Oliver Sacks

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. — Jane Austen

And I have to say, books haven't helped much with all this. Because whenever you read anything about love, whenever anyone tries to define it, there's always a state or an abstract noun, and I try to think of it like that. But actually, love is ... Well, it's just you. And when you go, it's gone. Nothing abstract about it. — Nick Hornby

I'm not the creative one. I know that. If Rory Storm hadn't come along ... and then The Beatles ... I would have continued running around in teddyboy gangs. Today, well ... I'd probably be a laborer. I'm glad I'm not, of course. It'll be nice to be part of history ... some sort of history anyway. What I'd like to be is in school history books and be read by kids. — Ringo Starr

She read books of poetry, though they had lately begun to stoke her fury. It was all very well for these poets, who wandered off to have adventures and then could string them to words, to music. Anything she might write would be formless, a creature of rage and stormcloud. No music there. — Ilana C. Myer

Writing fiction is not a profession that leaves one well-disposed toward reading fiction. One starts out loving books and stories, and then one becomes jaded and increasingly hard to please. I read less and less fiction these days, finding the buzz and the joy I used to get from fiction in ever stranger works of non-fiction, or poetry. — Neil Gaiman

My biggest adventures tend to come from the pages of the books I read. If you take those into account, I'm very well versed. I've lived through it all. But it's easier to make the risky decisions within the pages of make-believe. Living without a net and chasing adventure is just better when you're sure to get the happy ending. — Shae Scott

I had amazing intellectual privilege as a kid. My mom taught me to read when I was two or three. When I was five, I read and wrote well enough to do my nine-year older brother's homework in exchange for chocolate or cigarettes. By the time I was 10, I was reading Orwell, Tolstoy's 'War and Peace,' and the Koran. I was reading comic books, too. — Chris Abani

Someday it will dawn on man that woman does not read the wonderful books with which he has filled his libraries, and though she may well admire his marvelous works of art in museums she herself will rarely create, only copy. — Esther Vilar

I discover methods for myself and then read books that describe 'my' method. This leads me to believe that the creative well is shared in some magical way. — Gene Black

A person who reads lives more than one life, but that means that they die more than once as well. — Deanna Vasquez

I seem to grow more acutely conscious of the swift passage of time as I grow older. When I was small, days and hours were long and spacious, and there was play and acres of leisure, and many children's books to read. I remember that as I was writing a poem on "Snow" when I was eight. I said aloud, "I wish I could have the ability to write down the feelings I have now while I'm still little, because when I grow up I will know how to write, but I will have forgotten what being little feels like." And so it is that childlike sensitivity to new experiences and sensations seems to diminish in an inverse proportion to growth of technical ability. As we become polished, so do we become hardened and guilty of accepting eating, sleeping, seeing, and hearing too easily and lazily, without question. We become blunt and callous and blissfully passive as each day adds another drop to the stagnant well of our years. — Sylvia Plath

There were no horror movies or horror books to speak of in the '40s. I picked the '50s because that pretty well spans my life as an appreciator - as somebody who's been involved with this mass cult of horror, from radio and movies and Saturday matinees and books. In the '40s there really wasn't that much. People don't want to read about horrible things in horrible times. So, in the '40s, there was Val Lutin with The Cat People and The Curse of the Cat People and there wasn't much else. — Stephen King

As soon as he turns the key, a man with a heavy British accent starts talking about giants not being meant to live in groups.
"That's . . . Hagrid."
"Order of the Phoenix," Aaron says. "I got the full set as a Christmas present from Mom and Tay, since I'm in the car so much. I've read the books, of course, but . . . nice to listen to them, too."
And so we listen for the next ninety minutes. Well, Aaron and I listen. Taylor is asleep ten minutes in.
I close my eyes and try to lose myself in the story. The entire trip, I only check my phone twice. That's the closest I've been to relaxed all day.
Harry is just wondering whether Cho cried because of Cedric Diggory or because he's a rotten kisser when Molly speaks up. — Rysa Walker

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

Well, I've spent a lot of time in your libraries at night," said Ripred.
"You come up and read books?" asked Gregor.
"Read them, eat them, whatever mood strikes me," he said. — Suzanne Collins

For the first time in her life, she read voraciously. Anything that was on Joe's bookshelves she considered to have a worthy seal of approval. She tried authors she'd never heard of and authors she'd always meant to read. Every now and then she read passages twice, three times even, enjoying the wordcraft, the drama - but imagining that Joe had liked the book and wondering when he might be back and if there would be dinners they could share to discuss books they'd both read. [ ... ] Tess was well aware it was escapiscm but what a way to pass another evening on her own. — Freya North

If you feel ... that well-read people are less likely to be evil, and a world full of people sitting quietly with good books in their hands is preferable to world filled with schisms and sirens and other noisy and troublesome things, then every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, 'The world is quiet here,' as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good. — Lemony Snicket

Do you like manga?" she asked after a minute. "Anime?"
"Anime's cool. I'm not really into it, but 1 like Japanese movies,
animated or not."
"Well, I'm into it. I watch the shows, read the books, chat on the boards, and all that. But this girl I know, she's
completely into it. She spends most of her allowance on the books and DVDs. She can recite dialogue from
them." She caught my gaze. "So would you say she belongs here?"
"No. Most kids are that way about something, right? With me, it's
movies. Like knowing who directed a sci-fi movie made before I was born. — Kelley Armstrong

There are no bounds to the potential of a child who has been well loved. And by well loved I mean hugged tightly, kissed sweetly, and read to often! — Leigh Ann Hrutkay

Well, Bradbury's a genius. Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favorite books of all time, and The Illustrated Man as a collection of short stories ranks up there. When you read it you realize how influential it is on so many other stories and people. — Zack Snyder

Writing a NYT bestseller was a delightful experience. But there are many books which are read by few that should be read and reread by many, as well as books bought by many that are hardly worth the ink. — Ron Brackin

When one is well-read, one has a lot of illusion to overcome. — Marty Rubin

Although I'm not actually embarrassed by this, I tend not to read books that have awesome movies made from them, regardless of how well or badly the movie represented the actual written story. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I didn't study anything really. I didn't learn out of the books because I couldn't read music very well, so it is what they say it is - you learn from other people. And my cohorts and I would sneak around the coffee shops and hear stuff we wanted to learn, and then you ask whoever was playing it to teach you. — Joan Baez

Mr Rutger cornet de Groot. Never read any American poetry or any other foreign poetry, which is why he always mentions 2 poets as a reffering point, either Lucebert or Tonnus Oosterhoff. The guy started reading when he was 48 years old with a few library books and was turned instantly in one of the most important critics hired by the fund of literature. Oh well. — Martijn Benders

A country Sabbath is suggestive of rest and peace and quiet--sleepy blue skies, shadows golden and green, sunny fields, and the pink and snow of apple blossoms. June is at her height of radiant loveliness now. What a pity it is such a short time.

I am here in my old room--my little absolute kingdom. Here I read, write and dream. My favourite pictures adorn the walls, my well read books are on their shelves and my clock ticks me cheerful company. — L.M. Montgomery

(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

To have come on all this new world of writing, with time to read in a city like Paris where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was like having a great treasure given to you. You could take your treasure with you when you traveled too, and in the mountains where we lived in Switzerland and Italy, until we found Schruns in the high valley in the Vorarlberg in Austria, there were always the books, so that you lived in the new world you had found, the snow and the forests and the glaciers and their winter problems and your high shelter in the Hotel Taube in the village in the day time, and at night you could live in the other wonderful world the Russian writers were giving you. — Ernest Hemingway,

Those of us who know the transporting wonder of a reading life know that it little matters where we are when we talk about books or meet authors or bemoan the state of publishing because when we read, we are always inside, sheltered in that interior room, that clean, well-lighted, timeless place that is the written word. — Alice McDermott

Then letters came in but three times a week: indeed, in some places in Scotland where I have stayed when I was a girl, the post came in but once a month; - but letters were letters then; and we made great prizes of them, and read them and studied them like books. Now the post comes rattling in twice a day, bringing short jerky notes, some without beginning or end, but just a little sharp sentence, which well-bred folks would think too abrupt to be spoken. — Elizabeth Gaskell

You say often you wish a library; here I gif you one; for between these two lids (he meant covers) is many books in one. Read him well, and he will help you much; for the study of character in this book will help you to read it in the world, and paint it with your pen. — Louisa May Alcott

Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Unlike most readers in Antiquity who read their books aloud, we have developed the convention of reading silently. This lets us read more widely but often less well, especially when what we are reading - such as the plays of Shakespeare and Holy Scripture - is a body of oral material that has been, almost but not quite accidentally, captured in a book like a fly in amber. — Jaroslav Pelikan

Especially if you're endeavouring daily to write your own books, you read with a degree of - well, it's hard to forget you're a writer when you're reading. — Patrick DeWitt

Many who have read Marxist books have become renegades from the revolution, whereas illiterate workers often grasp Marxism very well. — Mao Zedong

Madame Picard believed that a child should be allowed to read anything: 'A book never does any harm if it is well written.' While she was there, I had once asked permission to read Madame Bovary and my mother, in an oversweet voice, had said: 'But if my darling reads books like that at his age, what will he do when he grows up?' 'I shall live them!' This reply had met with the most complete and lasting success. — Jean-Paul Sartre

There was nowhere for her to go. Not in the kitchen, not in the hallway, not in the bedroom. What she wanted was a little room of her own where she could go and jot down small things in her diary. Tatiana had no little room of her own. As a result she had no diary. Diaries, as she understood them from books, were supposed to be full of personal writings and filled with private words. Well, in Tatiana's world there were no private words. All private thoughts you kept in your head as you lay down next to another person, even if that other person happened to be your sister. Leo Tolstoy, one of her favorite writers, wrote a diary of his life as a young boy, an adolescent, a young man. That diary was meant to be read by thousands of people. That wasn't the kind of diary Tatiana wanted to keep. She wanted to keep one in which she could write down Alexander's name and no one would read it. She wanted to have a room where she could say his name out loud and no one would hear it. Alexander. — Paullina Simons

Wondering where the Mokians get all those shark teeth? Well it involves using children who read the last pages of books first as bait. — Brandon Sanderson

I'm sure that there must have been times when you have read books or watched films and found yourself secretly wishing for the villain to win. Why? Isn't that against the rules by which our society lives? Why should you feel this way? It's simple, really; the villain is the true hero of these tales, not the well-intentioned moron who somehow foils their diabolical scheme. The villain get's all the best lines, has the best costumes, has unlimited power and wealth- why on earth would anyone not want to be the villain? — Mark Walden

It turned out that Evgeny Evgenievich indeed had a clever plan how to convert me to math. As soon as I came to his office, he asked me, "So, I hear you like quantum physics. Have you heard about Gell-Mann's eightfold way and the quark model?" "Yes, I've read about this in several popular books." "But do you know what was the basis for this model? How did he come up with these ideas?" "Well ... " "Have you heard about the group SU(3)?" "SU what?" "How can you possibly understand the quark model if you don't know what the group SU(3) is? — Edward Frenkel

My new favorite title is How Jane Austen Ruined My Life. I don't have the courage to read it, though. I'm afraid to discover she's ruined mine as well. — Katherine Reay

I read everything aloud, novels as well as picture books. I believe the eye and ear are different listeners. So as writers, we have to please both. — Jane Yolen

And then there were the readers, Gawd bless them. We must have signed hundreds of thousands of copies for them by now. The books are often well read to the point of physical disintegration; if we run across a shiny new copy, it's usually because the owner's previous five have been stolen by friends, struck by lightning or eaten by giant termites in Sumatra. You have been warned. Oh, and we understand there's a copy in the Vatican library. It'd be nice to think so. — Terry Pratchett

So this is supposed to be the how, and when, and why, and what or reading - about the way that, when reading is going well, one book leads to another and to another, a paper trail of theme and meaning; and how, when it's going badly, when books don't stick or take, when your mood and the mood of the book are fighting like cats, you'd rather do anything but attempt the next paragraph, or reread the last one for the tenth time. "We talked about books," says a character in Charles Baxter's wonderful Feast of Love, "how boring they were to read, but how you loved them anyway. Anyone who hasn't felt like that isn't owning up. — Nick Hornby

Well, before I knew there was going to be a film. I was the biggest Harry Potter fan. I read all the books. — Rupert Grint

The great writers have always been great readers, but that does not mean that they read all the books that, in their day, were listed as the indispensable ones. In many cases, they read fewer books than are now required in most of our colleges, but what they did read, they read well. Because they had mastered these books, they became peers with their authors. They were entitled to become authorities in their own right. In the natural course of events, a good student frequently becomes a teacher, and so, too, a good reader becomes an author. — Mortimer J. Adler

Everyone always talks about the magic of books being able to take you to other places, to let you see exotic worlds, to make you experience new and interesting things. Well, do you think words alone can do this? Of course not! If you've ever thought that books are boring, it's because you don't know how to read them correctly. From now on, when you read a book, I want you to scream the words of the novel out loud while reading them, then do exactly what the characters are doing in the story. Trust me, it will make books way more exciting. Even dictionaries. Particularly dictionaries. — Brandon Sanderson

Once I was liable to the same mistakes, but, thanks to God, no longer ... '
Well, isn't it just as worthwhile to have devoted and applied yourself to this goal as to have read or written fifty pages? — Epictetus

Difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much. She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books. She doesn't read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a little wolf instead of a little girl. She is always starving for new books to gobble, and she wants grown-up books - great, big, fat ones - French and German as well as English - history and biography and poets, and all sorts of things. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

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

In a sense one should not go to books for ideas; the business of books is to make one think. We are not gramophone records, we are to think originally. What we preach is to be the result of our own thought. We do not merely transmit ideas. The preacher is not meant to be a mere channel through which water flows; he is to be more like a well. So the function of reading is to stimulate us in general, to stimulate us to think, to think for ourselves. Take all you read and masticate it thoroughly. Do not just repeat it as you have received it; deliver it in your own way, let it emerge as a part of yourself, with your stamp upon it. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

There are scores of books offering 'solutions' to sprawl. Their authors would do well to read this book. — Witold Rybczynski

Even in their reading, More charged, too many women were prone to superficiality. In search of a passing knowledge of books and authors, many read anthologies of excerpted works, that selected the brightest passages but left out deeper contexts - eighteenth-century Reader's Digest were quite popular. More cautioned against a habit she viewed as cultivating a taste only for "delicious morsels," one that spits out "every thing which is plain." Good books, in contrast, require good readers: "In all well-written books, there is much that is good which is not dazzling; and these shallow critics should be taught, that it is for the embellishment of the more tame and uninteresting parts of his work, that the judicious poet commonly reserves those flowers, whose beauty is defaced when they are plucked from the garland into which he had so skillfully woven them. — Karen Swallow Prior

Stop drifting. You're not going to re-read your Brief Comments, your Deeds of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, the commonplace books you saved for your old age. Sprint for the finish. Write off your hopes, and if your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can. — Marcus Aurelius

We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving ... We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins ... We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive as our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers ... We are the daughters of the feminists who said, "You can be anything," and we heard, "You have to be everything. — Courtney Martin

A couple of days after the last time I saw him, I got a typically well-written postcard. He said that after he kissed me goodbye at LAX he was driving away and turned on the radio. Elvis was singing "It's Now or Never." In my personal religion, a faith cobbled together out of pop songs and books and movies, there is nothing closer to a sign from God than Elvis Presley telling you "tomorrow will be too late" at precisely the moment you drop off a girl you're not sure you want to drop off. Sitting on the stairs to my apartment, I read that card and wept. It said he heard the song and thought about running after me. But he didn't. And just as well
those mixed-faith marriages hardly ever work. An Elvis song coming out of the radio wasn't a sign from God to him, it was just another one of those corny pop tunes he could live without. — Sarah Vowell

I must say, some are not very beautifully made. They're coffee-table books for people who drink alcohol. I have nothing against coffee-table books as long as they are well done. They must not look like gravestones on a table. Sometimes they are too big, they come in boxes and things like this. No, a book has to be easy to open and you don't have to be a bodybuilder to lift it. I like books I can read in bed. Those big tombstones would kill me. — Karl Lagerfeld

You've got to do something with all the books you've read, so you might as well imagine you've optioned them. — Natasha Lyonne

When you read a line that is just so well-written you just close the book and stare at the wall for a minute. — Anonymous

He looked around. The room, a few suitcases, some belongings, a handful of well-read books - a man needed few things to live. And it was good not to get used to many things when life was unsettled. Again and again one had to abandon them or they were taken away. One should be ready to leave every day. That was the reason he had lived alone - when one was on the move one should not have anything that could bind one. Nothing that could stir the heart. The adventure - but nothing more. — Erich Maria Remarque

When we think of the masterpieces that nobody praised and nobody read, back there in the past, we feel an impatient superiority to the readers of the past. If we had been there, we can't help feeling, we'd have known that Moby-Dick was a good book - -why, how could anyone help knowing?
But suppose someone says to us, "Well, you're here now: what's our own Moby-Dick? What's the book that, a hundred years from now, everybody will look down on us for not having liked?" What do we say then? — Randall Jarrell

Really important books to me are the classics. I try very hard to read them well - you know, especially once I got serious about writing. So, reading Tolstoy several times - 'War and Peace,' 'The Kreutzer Sonata' - all those were really important to me. — Karl Marlantes

I haven't been here long, but, nevertheless, all the same, what I've managed to observe and verify here arouses the indignation of my Tartar blood. By God, I don't want such virtues! I managed to make a seven-mile tour here yesterday. Well, it's exactly the same as in those moralizing little German picture books: everywhere here each house has its Vater, terribly virtuous and extraordinarily honest. So honest it's even frightening to go near him. I can't stand honest people whom it's frightening to go near. Each such Vater has a family, and in the evening they all read edifying books aloud. Over their little house, elms and chestnuts rustle. A sunset, a stork on the roof, and all of it extraordinarily poetic and touching ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I read and write for character. If I like and can relate to the characters in a story I can enjoy any kind of story. I also want something with a definitive plot - you know, beginning, middle and end--that has forward motion. I don't like series books that leave you hanging after you've finished a book and in my own fiction I try to make sure that there's always an entry point for those who are new to the book as well as long-time readers. — Charles De Lint

I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children. — Eleanor Catton

My theory about writing is that one should write books you'd like to read, but no one else has written yet. So, as long as I stick with that, I'm entertaining myself, and then hopefully my readers as well. I hope to god I realize that I'm repeating myself, if I ever do. But if I don't, I'm sure my readers will let me know. — Charles De Lint

It was a tricky quality that suggested, well, magic and things read in books, — Truman Capote

And yes, I confess, when I looked at him, I thought of Heathcliff and Mr Rochester and Maxim de Winter ... and how could I not, when I had been waiting for them to step out of the pages of the books I loved; when I knew them so well, read them inside out and into myself? — Justine Picardie

Gotham admired Maeve. By day she managed money, and did it brilliantly, but she didn't find it satisfied her intellect. She spoke four languages. She played the piano seriously well. And she read books. Lots of them. — Edward Rutherfurd

The difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much. She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books. She doesn't read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a little wolf instead of a little girl. She is always starving for new books to gobble, and she wants grown-up books
great, big, fat ones
French and German as well as English
history and biography and poets, and all sorts of things. Drag her away from her books when she reads too much. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Day after day we read about them, each new man more brilliant than the last. They were not just an all-star first team, but an all-star second team as well. There were counts kept on how many Rhodes scholars there were in the Administration, how many books by members of the new Administration (even the Postmaster, J. Edward Day, had written a novel, albeit a bad one). — David Halberstam

One day, Aaron Levie, the twenty-six-year-old CEO of Box, a well-funded new tech company, tells me it's really important to learn from what happened in the 1990s - which is why he has read a bunch of books about that era. — Dan Lyons

Always be prepared one day the electricity will stop if your phone isn't charged well and you don't have the need stuff you will get bored very easy. For example you can't read a physical book, you will need a torchlight, but if you have a book on your phone you can read it also you can listen! — Deyth Banger

It's a store full of books, which are objects that can be thrown as well as read," Monty replied blandly. The Crow cocked his head. "I had no idea you humans lived with so much danger." Monty — Anne Bishop

It is a fact that, being a quick reader, apart from enabling a person to study good books such as Macaulay and Gibbon, enables a person to read a lot of bad books as well. — Antonia Fraser

Whether white, black, Asian, or Latino, American students rarely arrive at college as habitual readers, which means that few of them have more than a nominal connection to the past. It is absurd to speak, as does the academic left, of classic Western texts dominating and silencing everyone but a ruling elite or white males. The vast majority of white students do not know the intellectual tradition that is allegedly theirs any better than black or brown ones do. They have not read its books, and when they do read them, they may respond well, but they will not respond in the way that the academic left supposes. For there is only one 'hegemonic discourse' in the lives of American undergraduates, and that is the mass media. Most high schools can't begin to compete against a torrent of imagery and sound that makes every moment but the present seem quaint, bloodless, or dead. — David Denby

Archbishop. Why do I never read the lesson?"
"I beg your pardon, ma'am?"
"In church. Everybody else gets to read and one never does. It's not laid down, is it? It's not off-limits?"
"Not that I'm aware, ma'am."
"Good. Well in that case I'm going to start. Leviticus, here I come. Goodnight."
The archbishop shook his head and went back to Strictly Come Dancing. — Alan Bennett

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

It's awfully good of some people to have asked me to take the job, but I'd rather read about a grand escape than plan one. Besides, I'm terrible at keeping secrets and I hate to scheme against people. It seems rude. I don't deal with guilt well and I'm worried we might hurt some feelings in the process of defending ourselves. Also, I am juggling a couple of books. Being a full-time conspirator would take away from my reading time. — Joe Hill

When women read romance books, one of two things generally happen." Mal ran a hand through his lovely locks. "They either want to discuss the book in great depth. And probably, life and your relationship. Now sometimes that's okay. You reach a higher level of understanding with each other and shit. But sometimes it sucks, pure and simple. You wind up getting bitched at for days because of something the dude in the book did that makes you look bad. But if it's an awesome book, however, a hot one? Well then ... kinky fuckery like you wouldn't believe, man. The ideas Pumpkin has gotten out of some of those books. Gold. I could never have talked her into trying half of that stuff. — Kylie Scott

Hypocrisy is what being a parent is all about," Jon said. "Well done for cracking the books, Jared and Holly. You see how it pays off."
Holly smiled and the light of her smile seemed to spill all over the room, reflections of light refracted all over everywhere.
"It's true reading is a wonderful thing," Rusty observed. "I read a Cosmo a year ago, and I still remember how to keep my nails in perfect condition and also ten top tips on how to dress to accentuate my ass."
Now everybody was staring at Rusty. Unlike Jared, he did not blush.
"Those tips are working," he said. "Don't pretend you haven't all noticed. I know the truth. — Sarah Rees Brennan

My view of writing "Coldest Girl in Coldtown" was to take every single thing that I loved from every vampire book I had ever read and dump it into one book
everything I like
trying to evoke some of the decadence ... Vampires are a high-class monster: They want to dress up. They want to drink a lot of absinthe, or force their victims to drink a lot of absinthe. They have big parties and have elegant rituals. I think that's a thing we associate with vampires
they are the royalty of our monsters. We expect them to be rich, we expect them to be well-dressed. I wanted to have some of that be true because I like it, and have some of it not be true because it's kind of weird.
I wanted to put in the idea of infection, which I was really interested in and which was a big feature of the vampire books I read growing up. And, the fear and desire for infection
the way in which our urge towards loving vampires is nihilistic. Our fear of them is our survival instincts kicking in. — Holly Black

As for 'too much description,' well, opinions differ. We write the books we want to read. And I want to read books that are richly textured and full of sensory detail, books that make me feel as if I am experiencing a story, not just reading it. Plot is only one aspect of telling a tale, and not the most important one. It is the journey that matters, not how fast you arrrive at the destination.
That's my view, anyway. Others writers differ, of course. There are hundreds of books where everything is subordinate to advancing the plot, some of them quite fine, but my work has never been about that, and never will be. — George R R Martin

I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across - not to just depict life - or criticize it - but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can't do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can't believe in it. Things aren't that way. — Ernest Hemingway,

I rode my bike home and did the one thing that always helped when things weren't going well. I read. Books were my refuge. Getting lost in a solid adventure story was the best way I knew of to turn off reality. — D.J. MacHale

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