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Books and reading

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“Read day and night, devour books — these sleeping pills — not to know but to forget! Through books you can retrace your way back to the origins of spleen, discarding history and its illusions.”
Emil Cioran (1911–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Kath Two was the sort of person whose caches were apt to be crammed with paper books. For her, the electronic books were an insurance policy of sorts. The four-day elevator ride might be nothing more than a prelude to further journeys, some of which might take her to places with little to no bandwidth, and nothing was worse than getting stuck in a situation like that with nothing to read.”
Neal Stephenson (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people who can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.”
Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) said by 1877 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.”
Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) said by 1877 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate! To spend several days in a friend’s house and hunger for something to read, while you are treading on costly carpets, sitting upon luxurious chairs and sleeping upon down, is as if one were bribing your body for the sake of cheating your mind.”
Horace Mann (1796–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... idea of what books and literature are for ... serious fiction ... It is for people who may be a little isolated ... may be isolated by the very fact that they like to read books. And that my job really is to participate in that community and make that human connection. So, I went from trying to impress people or change them ... to just trying to make that connection.”
Jonathan Franzen (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is not characteristic of American executives to read books, except books on 'management' and mysteries. ... Those who who do venture into this arena ... are looked upon by their colleagues with mingled awe and incredulity.”
C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is only by struggling with difficult books, books over one's head, that anyone learns to read.”
Mortimer Adler (1902–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was a period of time where all the books in the world could fit on this shelf,' Walter Mosley said. He was pointing at one modest-size row of books in his Brooklyn home ..."And what people did is they read them over and over again, and they knew them so well, and they learned so much, and it changed them. Now, this shelf represents one second of publishing.”
Walter Mosley (born 1952) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In his leisure Clayton read, often aloud to his wife, from the store of books he had brought for their new home. Among these were many for little children — picture books, primers, readers — for they had known that their little child would be old enough for such before they might hope to return to England.”
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The shelves of books we haven't written, like those of books we haven't read, stretches out into the darkness of the universal library's farthest space. We are always at the beginning of the beginning of the letter A.”
Alberto Manguel (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But we may safely predict that Marx himself will become more and more what he already is: a chapter from a textbook of the history of ideas, a figure that no longer evokes any emotions, simply the author of one the 'great books' of the nineteenth century - one of those books that very few bother to read but whose titles are known to the educated public.”
Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009) first seen 1214 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: New Epilogue, p. 1214 (See also: Karl Marx - History - Statistics...)
“Be careful to read books before you recommend them. Recently some church groups have been induced to recommend books which turned out to be filled with obscenity. This is an important part of the Socialist-Communist campaign to discredit religious culture. What technique could better serve their purpose than to have the churches themselves sponsor degenerate literature!”
W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That frivolous young widow ought to have paid for the solace she declared so often she found in books. "I must read to forget." All very well, but she should not forget to pay for the means of forgetfulness. The waters of Lethe may be waters bought without money and without price, but my books ought to be paid for in cash. (p. 178)”
William Darling (politician) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The books I write often feel like the books I wanted to read, but they didn't exist, so I brought them into being.”
Rebecca Solnit (born 1961) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rebecca Solnit: By the Book". The New York Times, 2018.
“I read a few books like Skinny Bitch, a bunch of books on vegan lifestyles and my mother always brought me to vegetarian restaurants, so I was really into diets and studying health. And I just thought it would be the best step, so I went vegetarian. … I watched a lot of PETA videos on YouTube, and it was heartbreaking.”
Jenna Talackova (born 1988) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Unveiling her PETA ad on Davie Street; as quoted in "Jenna Talackova unveils racy PETA ad and promotes vegan diet", (24 January 2014).
“I have read over a hundred books. And I have played, over and over, recordings of the symphonies of Mozart and Brahms and Prokofiev and Beethoven, and chamber music, and operettas, and various musical works by Bach and Sibelius and Dolly Parton and Palestrina and Lennon. This music sometimes, even more than the books, enlarges my sense of the past.”
Walter Tevis (1928–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It appeals to me when I read it but I cannot write like that. I have tried to write like that; for a while I get really involved and enjoy it but then it all starts to feel like a pointless exercise. It is just too clever by half; I don't like clever books, I like honest books…”
Rohinton Mistry (born 1952) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On why he leans towards a style reminiscent of 19th century literature in “Rohinton Mistry: 'Family Matters,' and Literary Ones” in Asia Society (2002 Nov 1)
“I read everything I could get my hands on about aviating," she later recalled. "Some of the libraries wouldn't let black girls who picked cotton borrow books, but the books I wanted were about piloting, and folks were so surprised they let me have them anyway.”
Bessie Coleman (1892–1926) said by 1926 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you want to write in a particular genre it’s likely you’ll read that genre. At the same time I sometimes find that the books that really get me writing are a surprise. It’s not necessarily books of modern poetry that make me want to write poems.”
Rachel Bush (1941–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Growing up, books were my most reliable way to get Somewhere Else, and Somewhere Else is where I wanted to be a lot of the time, so I read way too many books to count.”
Eloghosa Osunde wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At the age of twelve (12) when I had gone to the secondary school, I spent most of my time in the college library because there were so many story books and we would read as many story books as possible.”
Jerry Agada (born 1952) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wrote the books I should have liked to read. That's always been my reason for writing. People won't write the books I want, so I have to do it for myself.”
C. S. Lewis (attributed) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Roger Lancelyn Green, C. S. Lewis (1963), p. 9
“If I write a crappy comic book, it doesn't cost the budget of an emergent Third World nation. When you've got these kinds of sums involved in creating another two hours of entertainment for Western teenagers, I feel it crosses the line from being merely distasteful to being wrong. To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Bible is different from all other books; other books are written by man, but the Bible not only contains the sayings and commandments of God, but was also written entirely under divine inspiration. So we might say that it is God's book, which he gave to man to lead him to everlasting life.”
Matta El Meskeen (1919–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It will come as no surprise to those of you in the book trade when I say that although books do not cause cancer, books in general do not sell as well as cigarettes.”
Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Guest of Honor speech at Aussiecon Two (43rd World Science Fiction Convention, August 1985), as published in Castle of Days (1992)
“Witzel frequently refers to the references to armaka, "ruins", in the RV, as evidence that the RV is later to the desolation of the Indus cities... In any case, the word armaka, so frequently referred to in the post-RV literature, is found in the RV only in one late hymn in a Late Book: in I.133.3. The Early and Middle Books, and even much of the Late Books, are totally ignorant about these ruins.”
Shrikant Talageri (born 1958) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“books 2 to 7 (usually referred to as the ‘family books’) … have been ordered according to the increasing number of hymns per book” ... “very important principle in their arrangement.”
Michael Witzel (born 1943) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You’ve got quite a library. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many books in one place before.” “I like the heft and feel of a book,” replied Santiago. “Computer libraries are filled with electrical impulses. Books are filled with words.”
Mike Resnick (1942–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There were lots of intro ‘nuts and bolts books,’ which were fine,” Hurwitz said. “There were lots of very boring, esoteric academic books, which were less fine, and there was just nothing that spoke to someone like me who was like, ‘alright, I want the deepest, most transformational, most life changing wisdom, and I also need the basics’ and so I just thought maybe I can write a book like that.”
Sarah Hurwitz (born 1981) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The connections of Book 5 with Books 1 and 8 and not with the other clan books (2-4, 6-7) is interesting, since it seems to belong to the core RV collection (Oldenberg [1888a]; Witzel [1997]).”
Theodore Proferes first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (PROFERES 2003:16, fn)..
“All this takes many clumsy and inexact word-descriptions to describe, but if we read paintings like we read books, it would not be such a hidden language for painting can effortlessly produce such elegant solutions.”
Peter Greenaway (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So many read good books and get nothing, because they read them over cursorily, slightly, superficially.”
Thomas Brooks (Puritan) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The freedom to publish, of course, is also the freedom to read, the freedom to write what you want, to be able to choose what you want to read and not have it decided for you externally — and the freedom to publish books that ought to be published and sometimes are difficult to publish because of pressure from this or that group.”
Salman Rushdie (born 1947) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speaking via video link from New York at the Freedom to Publish award at the British Book Awards (15 May 2023), as cited in "Salman Rushdie mocks 'comical' attempt to rewrite James Bond novels" The Times (16 May 2023)
“Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.”
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) said by 1799 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberals don't read books – they don't read anything … That's why they're liberals. They watch TV, absorb the propaganda, and vote on the basis of urges.”
Ann Coulter (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you read a lot of books, you're considered well-read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well-viewed.”
Jane Wagner (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Lily Tomlin
“Amy Kofman: Have you read all the books in here? Derrida: No, only four of them. But I read those very, very carefully.”
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Derrida (2003 documentary), referring to his personal library
“Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed.”
Anne Rice (1941–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Master books, but do not let them master you. Read to live, not live to read.”
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The older you get, the humbler you get. I know I don't have that much to offer, and I know I've now read Moby Dick and Anna Karenina, and if I had read those books before I wrote The Hottest State, I don't think I'd have published it. I had the arrogance of the uneducated, which sometimes you need.”
Ethan Hawke (born 1970) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Guardian (2009-05-16)
“I never read an author twice if I can't trust him or her to make it come out right. I never read an author twice if he writes the kind of books where everyone and everything is in tension from page one to the last paragraph of the last page, like that dreadful TV show, 24. Tension is something I have plenty of in life. I don't need it elsewhere.”
Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I live to be a hundred--and I hope I do--I won't have time to read all the books I want to read, or talk to the people I want to know. Not party talk. That's a waste of time. Real talk.”
Brian Keith (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A lot of 9/11 conspiracy books are rated pretty well on Amazon, because only the conspiracists bother to read them. Whereas, Othello or Macbeth or something, everyone reads, a lot of kids have to read it for homework when they don’t want to, necessarily, so they’ll leave a bad review there, potentially.”
Nate Silver (born 1978) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It didn’t occur to me that my books would be widely read at all, and that enabled me to write anything I wanted to. And even once I realized that they were being read, I still wrote as if I were writing in secret. That’s how one has to write anyway—in secret.”
Louise Erdrich (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nevertheless, the definite impulse towards literature came from Miss Rob. She was the matron of the village, and ever since I was a child she told me that I would go far. It occurred to her to give me a push and she made me read books of short stories. The demands were very simple: ‘Read a story and when you pass by here, tell it to me.”
Quince Duncan (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You must take a year off, one of these days, before you’re old and tired and weighed down by responsibility. Go away somewhere, and read. Read all the important books. Educate yourself, then you’ll see the world in a different way.”
Helon Habila (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In that Czarist Russia, Jewish girls were not taught even to read and write. It took (my mother) becoming a revolutionary and joining the Bund, the Jewish Bund, a socialist organization, to learn to read and love books.”
Tillie Olsen (1912–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source