Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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Books and reading
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“She was too tired to feel anything more, she wanted a book to do to her what books did: take away the world, slide it aside for a little bit, and let her please, please just be somewhere and somebody else.”
Lev Grossman (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I go to literature or books, I am either looking for escape, answers or better insights on issues and things. I think if you are a gay boy or girl who is going through doubts and depression, a book, music, film or just visual arts with images that reflect who you are goes a long way in reaffirming that you matter, that you exist, and that you are not alone.”
Jude Dibia (born 1975) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Polly Dunbar in 1980 is an English author-illustrator. She is best known for her self-illustrated books Penguin, the Tilly and Friends series and Hello, Mum – an illustrated memoir of motherhood and her first book for adults.”
Polly Dunbar (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have two books – one a sort of travel book, experimental, with pictures by an artist, another a novel based on the life of Rimbaud. Both are in waiting for a publisher but these are hard to find these days.”
Barbara Adair wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unless we are children, or retards, when we are told a story we instinctively feel whether it’s plausible or fanciful. Instinctively, Christians feel that the stories told by the holy books of other religions are fantastical. Yet, as incredible as it seems, they don’t sense the smell of fantasy of the stories told by their own holy book, more or less like someone who is used to his own foot odor.”
Paulo Bittencourt (1892–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“we need to tell stories about ourselves, because others are talking too. Every book and movie out there with a cop as a hero, saving the world from terrorists and thugs hellbent on chaos? We need to counter that. We need books about the oppressed, about the beauty of resistance.”
Margaret Killjoy (born 1982) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My 2023 book "Once Upon a Prime", on the links between mathematics and literature, was published by Flatiron Books US and HarperCollins UK, and has been translated into several languages including Korean, Chinese, Italian and Spanish.”
Sarah B. Hart wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have a new book entitled "Peoplescapes -- My Story From Purging To Painting" an illustrated memoir (Babu Books).”
Nancy Calef (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...all those other 'How To' books were just about people that knew about this thing. This is different, because he's not a bird-watcher; this is his journey into that world . . . I'd like it hardbacked and leather, because it's a lovely book. It's one you'd want to treasure.”
Bub Bridger (1924–2009) said by 2009 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's not a world that I know but I came to know something about it though the book which was good, but I see...when I look at literature, when I look at books I look at the structure of them and ... I saw a fairy tale actually, when I think about it you know the traditional princess who becomes a maid who rises to become a queen and all these mad people inbetween on that journey...”
Bub Bridger (1924–2009) said by 2009 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How can the answer to today’s questions be in such an old book?” “The answers to almost all of today’s questions can be found in old books,” Smyke retorted. “If you want to find out, look them up. If not, forget it.”
Walter Moers (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written, that’s all.”
Walter Moers (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Under the benign leadership of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Concord writers would engage in what has often been called a second war of independence: against cultural domination from abroad and against religious bigotry and rampant materialism at home. Emerson's first book, , appearing when Thoreau was still in college, was (according to the latter's biographer) "one of the seminal books of his life.”
Paul Brooks (1909–1998) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (320 pages; quote from p. xiii; 1st edition published in 1980 by Houghton Mifflin)
“What I want in that book is for the adults to avoid wounding the characters of the children. The three topics discussed in the books are about how to guide the children if they don't seem to fit the norm of society.”
Rita Avila (born 1964) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rita Avila writes books to guide parents The Hive Asia, 18 September 2017.
“The first step is to keep the book industry alive: to save jobs and preserve the space in which books provide information to South Africans.”
Mark Gevisser (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A good book is fruitful of other books; it perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its readers.”
Amos Bronson Alcott (attributed) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man may read Plato without clearly comprehending much of what he means. He cannot read him without becoming, in some degree, a changed man.”
Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I read world literature and I read French romances in the originals. I had quite a profound knowledge - no, that sounds conceited, but I did have a profound interest in everything spiritual.”
Baldur von Schirach (1907–1974) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To Leon Goldensohn, March 10, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004
“Absorb what is said as you read but endeavor not to hold on to it or think about it. Read in the moment and each step will take you closer to complete self-knowledge.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most scripts are bad. I read a lot of them. Brick was a good script just to read. It was like, “Oh my God, these words feel so good in my mouth.” A lot of movies try to set up a world with cool sets, costumes, camera work. In Brick, the world is born from the words.”
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (born 1981) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Newsweek, March 31, 2006
“An alert copyreader on a newspaper couldn’t believe it when he read a reporter’s account of the theft of 2025 pigs. That’s a lot of pigs, he thought, and called the farmer to check the copy. “Is it true that you lost 2025 pigs?” he asked. “Yeth,” lisped the farmer. “Thanks,” returned the copyreader, and corrected the story to read “two sows and 25 pigs.”
Evan Esar (1899–1995) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Humorous English (1961), p213
“I have read and re-read the Arusha Declaration and found nothing wrong with it except perhaps replacing a few commas here and there... it was clear for some of us that it would only be a mad man who would stand up and defend the Arusha Declaration.”
Julius Nyerere (1922–1999) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Defending the Arusha Declaration, 1995. Culture of submission killing Africa - Soyinka
“[G]ood readers read the lines and better readers read the spaces.”
John Barth (1930–2024) said by 2024 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was overjoyed when I read Yevtushenko's "Babi Yar"; the poem astounded me. It astounded thousands of people…People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko's poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence.”
Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933–2017) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Solomon Volkov (ed.), Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (New York: Limelight, 2006) pp. 158-9.
“I couldn’t have written ‘‘Nanette’’ without understanding that I had autism. I don’t read the world the way other people read it.”
Hannah Gadsby (born 1978) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have…read it with a good deal of amusement and enjoyment. The latter is due, I suppose, entirely to the subject – for everyone likes to imagine what a man could do if he were a dictator or Pope, or Caliph; the amusement is mainly at the author's expence. The style is one of the most preposterous I have ever read, and I doubt if I ever saw so much pedantry combined with so much ignorance.”
Frederick Rolfe (1860–1913) said by 1913 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: C. S. Lewis, letter to Arthur Greeves dated October 1, 1934, cited from W. H. Lewis (ed.) The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004) vol. 2, p. 143
“People don't like to read papers — they like to read titles.”
Sean M. Carroll (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We read (experience) a text linearly, forgetting most of it while we read; then we study it as a simultaneous unit. (p. 325)”
Northrop Frye (1912–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just as Hegel is said to have understood his philosophy for the first time when he read its French translation, Vilfredo Pareto could have learned what it was he meant exactly to say when he read Bergson's 1938 classic.”
Paul Samuelson (1915–2009) said by 2009 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Prose and poetry are different in construction. You can lie back and read prose, and you can read it fast. Poetry on the other hand, requires a different kind of attention and concentration … the effect it has on the ear and the imagination.”
Michael Schmidt (poet) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As to Gibbon, I have read a part of his third volume. Though a writer of sense, parts, and industry, I read him with little pleasure. His loaded and luxuriant style is disgusting to the last degree; and his work is polluted every where by the most immoral as well as irreligious insinuations.”
Richard Hurd (bishop) first seen 1788 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Rev. Dr. Balguy (7 July 1788), quoted in Francis Kilvert, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Right Rev. Richard Hurd, D. D., Lord Bishop of Worcester; With a Selection From His Correspondence and Other Un…
“It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cosmus, Duke of Florence, was wont to say of perfidious friends, that "We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.”
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) said by 1626 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Definition of a classic — something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) first seen 1900 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoting or paraphrasing a Professor Winchester in "Disappearance of Literature", speech at the Nineteenth Century Club, New York, 20 November 1900, in Mark Twain's Speeches (1910), ed. William Dean Howells, p. 194
“Security, for me, took a tumble not when I read that there were Communists in Hollywood but when I read your editorial in praise of loyalty testing and thought control. If a man is in health, he doesn't need to take anybody else's temperature to know where he is going.”
E. B. White (1899–1985) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to the New York Herald Tribune (29 November 1947)
“Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live.”
Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) first seen 1857 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: June 1857
“Note that nobody reads every post in linux-kernel. In fact, nobody who expects to have time left over to actually do any real kernel work will read even half. Except Alan Cox, but he's actually not human, but about a thousand gnomes working in under-ground caves in Swansea. None of the individual gnomes read all the postings either, they just work together really well.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“Read my little fable: He that runs may read. Most can raise the flowers now, For all have got the seed.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Flower; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Also quoted by: Alfred Tennyson
“Send me no more reviews of any kind. — I will read no more of evil or good in that line. — Walter Scott has not read a review of himself for thirteen years.”
Lord Byron (1788–1824) first seen 1821 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his publisher, John Murray (3 November 1821).
“That author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it.”
Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) said by 1832 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think that's easier to read. Pardon me. Less difficult to read.”
Larry Wall (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are mature, we decide what we read or do not read.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What we read as adults should be read, I think, with no warnings or alerts beyond, perhaps: enter at your own risk.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At certain times I read a lot of poetry. My favorite poets are Shelley and Keats. Rimbaud is so identifiable. Lord Byron. I don't know. Lately if I read poems, it's like I can always hear the guitar. Even with Shakespeare's sonnets I can hear a melody because it's all broken up into timed phrases so I hear it. I always keep thinking, 'What kind of song would this be?'”
Bob Dylan (born 1941) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Denise Worrell, "'It's All Right in Front': Dylan on Life and Rock" in Time (25 November 1985)
“There is surely a Physiognomy, which those experienced and Master Mendicants observe… For there are mystically in our faces certain Characters that carry in them the motto of our Souls, wherein he that cannot read A.B.C. may read our natures.”
Thomas Browne (1605–1682) said by 1682 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But in my homeboys' high school, it's not like that. They don't have trips to go see this Broadway play, they don't read things we read. They didn't know when I was like: "Yo, Shakespeare's dope.”
Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) said by 1996 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Imagine a lover who has received a letter from his beloved – I assume that God's Word is just as precious to you as this letter is to the lover. I assume that you read and think you ought to read God's Word in the same way the lover reads this letter.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anais Nin gave me my most original, or so I thought, creation.As I read Incest, I realized that something which I had always taken to be unique, the voice of Myra Breckinridge, was actually that of Anaïs in all the flowing megalomania of the diaries. Of course, I had not read the diaries then, but even so, if only for that one thundering voice, I am forever in her debt.”
Gore Vidal (1925–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In this world you either read or write, and writers write out of contempt for their colleagues, out of a desire to have something good to read once in a while.”
Umberto Eco (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source