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Books and reading

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“And everyone's reading, you have to read, you can't be on the tube without reading, reading is very important. You get on on the morning and every single person is reading the Metro. Everyone, everyone. [imitates line of people reading newspaper] Why doesn't one person just read it to the carriage?”
Michael McIntyre (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read-ultimately you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) first seen 1845 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Stages on Life's Way, 1845 p. 363-364
“Mainly because I am a reader first and foremost and the book that I wanted to read didn't exist at the time. I really went looking for the book and couldn't find it...what I read for pleasure was science fiction. I wanted to read more Octavia Butler; I wanted to read another Tananarive Due book; I even read a LeVar Burton novel. I don't know how to tell you how desperately I was searching.”
Sheree Thomas (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where is a book before it is born? Does a book grow like a tree? Who are a book's parents? Does a book need two parents -- a mother and a father? Can a book be born inside another book? And where is the parent book of books?”
Peter Greenaway (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If many great books seem unreadable and unintelligible ... it may be because we have not for a long time learned to read by reading them. Great books teach people not only how to read them, but how to read all other books.”
Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a contradiction of terms to say you are a writer and yet you are not reading. Because if you’re not reading, how are you able to generate enough ideas for what you’re writing?…. I still enjoy reading, I have a library full of books and I love sharing my books with other people–although sometimes they don’t come back but that’s OK, the books are out there.”
Lawrence Darmani (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“…I read literally everything I could get my hands on – the shampoo bottle, the cereal box. My mom didn’t let us have books at the table or we’d all have read. We didn’t always have electricity, so I read by candlelight. I read really fast too. My parents realised I’d run out of things to read and were like: “We need to buy you way more books.”
Akwaeke Emezi (born 1987) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I want to see more children, not only reading books, but being able to turn the books into plays and writing their own books because I think children would enjoy reading books that are written by their own peers”
Khabonina Qubeka (born 1981) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Up close with Khabonina Qubeka;Kabonina, a Bedfordview resident, started dancing at the age of six in Newtown, in a modern dance class,November 12, 2015,Buli Sonqishe
“Reading gives us the furniture of our minds. Reading can spell the difference between independence and slavery; liberation and isolation. Without reading, our history would have turned out differently. Reading made and shaped our heroes. Reading liberates.”
Ambeth Ocampo (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was always determined to find just the right book for that one child who maybe was a reluctant reader. I knew there was a book to turn him on to reading. I just had to find it. I do have a special place in my heart for kids who maybe have trouble reading or who just don't want to for various reasons. It's always my goal to write books that will somehow entice them to want to read.”
Debbie Dadey (born 1959) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Children's author Debbie Dadey visiting downtown library to sign books, brainstorm. (July 29, 2013)
“I am a reader, as well as a writer. I read whenever I have the opportunity to do so, and as often as I can. My slogan for reading is, ‘’read a book a week.’’ You see, no matter how small the book you pick every week is, you will be sure to cover a lot of ground in reading by the end of a year.”
Zaynab Alkali (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it.”
Horace Mann (1796–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[B]ooks—there is a good kind of a book and a bad kind of a book. I am not to assume that you are all ill acquainted with this; but I may remind you that it is a very important consideration at present. It casts aside altogether the idea that people have that if they are reading any book—that if an ignorant man is reading any book, he is doing rather better than nothing at all.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many people think they cannot have knowledge or understanding of God without reading books. But hearing is better than reading, and seeing is better than hearing. Hearing about Benares is different from reading about it; but seeing Benares is different from either hearing or reading.”
Ramakrishna (1836–1886) said by 1886 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I was very young, I think I was aware that I was reading different kinds of books, which slightly took my teachers aback. I can remember boastfully telling my teacher, when I was about 10, that I was reading . She clearly thought this was a bad idea. But I was a slightly odd, inward child. At home – we didn’t have television – I was reading, reading all the time.”
Hermione Lee (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think there is no one of us who can boast of having telescopic eyes. But when you read, books become your telescopic eyes. You will see the whole world through the books you have been reading. And you become wiser. If you don’t read any book at all, you will rarely develop.”
Mabel Segun (1930–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would never require anyone to read any book. That seems antithetical to why we read — which is to choose a book for our personal reasons. I always shudder when I’m told my books are on required reading lists.”
Amy Tan (born 1952) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: interview (2013)
“Always be reading. Go to the library. There's magic in being surrounded by books. Get lost in the stacks. Read bibliographies. It's not the book you start with, it's the book that book leads you to.”
Austin Kleon (born 1983) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would never read a book... I'm very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that, I think, if you wrote a book, you fucked up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.”
Sam Bankman-Fried (born 1992) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex—And Maybe You Should Too" (interview by Adam Fisher), Sequoia, September 22, 2022.
“There is really no way of considering a book independently of one's special sensations in reading it on a particular occasion. In this as in everything else one must allow a certain relativity. In a sense, one can never read the book that the author originally wrote, and one can never read the same book twice.”
Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Triple Thinkers (1938), Preface, p. ix, [ 1948 Oxford University Press edition]
“The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry; The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy; The books that people talk about we never can recall; And the books that people give us — oh, they’re the worst of all!”
Carolyn Wells (1862–1942) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Books", in Harper's Monthly Magazine, vol. 121, no. 723 (August 1910) p. 484
“My books must be an absolute nightmare to translate. I wouldn't do it. I had a couple of them in Japanese some years ago and my wife met a Japanese woman who said that she had read the books. And she asked her what the translations were like. This woman said they were the worst translation she had ever read in her life. She said she didn't recognise the books when she finally read them in English.”
John Banville (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well, I'd always grown around books. My father had a decent library. My mother was a school mistress, and there was always the contact with books. I read my mother's copy of Arrow of God, the first of the Achebe books that I read, in primary four. It was in the same period that I read Ngugi's Weep not Child, and Alan Paton's, Cry, the Beloved Country.”
Obi Nwakanma wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you have mastered the numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading a book. You will be reading meanings.”
Harold Geneen (1910–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Read only the best books. There are plenty of them, far more than you will ever find time to read, and when they are to be had it is a pity to waste time on any others...Goethe once said of someone he knew: "He is a dull man. If he were a book, I would not read him". When you find that a book is poor, and does not give you even the bare facts you are in search of, waste no more time upon it.”
James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) first seen 1911 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Some Hints on Reading - Address to the Students of Rutgers (formerly Queen's) College, New Jersey October, 1911'. In University and Historical Addresses, Delivered During a Residence in the United States As an Ambassad…
“I was indignant because I hadn't even read about it. ...I was that kid who had read every physics book, every science book, I'd read every copy of and whatever else... I was the... kid who had really read everything, and nobody had ever mentioned the ocean.”
Helen Czerski (born 1978) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had long ago abandoned the idea that there was any point in reading books. Perfectly uselessthat was their essential charm. He’d given up reading new books altogether. Someone, he couldn’t remember who, had recommended he read a novel by some Jewish chap. Turned out to be all about wanking. ‘Whacking-off’ he called it. Summed up modern literature perfectly.”
David Nokes (1948–2009) said by 2009 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was reading the Book of Job. / People I knew came and went, / I read their book, / the seasons turned away, / I had been reading for a long time. / I was quiet. Not a single leaf to be seen. / I looked up: it had gone dark on me, / that star / in the middle of the sentence: // Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?”
Mirkka Rekola (1931–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Books are the greatest and the most satisfactory of recreations. I mean the use of books for pleasure. Without books, without having acquired the power of reading for pleasure, none of us can be independent, but if we can read we have a sure defence against boredom in solitude.”
Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1862–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In fact the only times we could read funny books was when my father was in the Navy. Nothing would infuriate him more than to catch us browsing through Captain Marvel or Plastic Man. Men, after all, didn’t waste their time reading funny books. Men, he’d tell us, took life seriously. Nothing could be learned from books that were funny.”
Oscar Zeta Acosta (1935–1974) said by 1974 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Marilynne Robinson says she read Moby-Dick when she was nine. I wish I could say such a thing! I was reading horse books, dog books, the Baba Yaga stories in : my was my most treasured possession, but I didn’t read with much discrimination.”
Joy Williams (American writer) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I told the Englishman that my alma mater was books, a good library. Every time I catch a plane, I have with me a book that I want to read—and that's a lot of books these days. If I weren't out here every day battling the white man, I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity—because you can hardly mention anything I'm not curious about.”
Malcolm X (1925–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not sure if books change lives but I am sure that books have inspired my life and fulfilled the voids in it. My first girlfriend, I found her between the covers and more than anything else I discovered and understood this self far better. If any of these count as consequences of reading a book, the book will be Bogobe bja Tswitswi.”
Kgebetli Moele (born 1978) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We need to constantly improve on the quality of life and so we need to read as individuals and inculcate the habit of reading to the young ones. We have to encourage the young ones to read but because of the existence of iPads and tablets they are not picking books to read out of curiosity.”
Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings (1948–2025) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Nana Konadu out with first book “It takes a woman”, Graphic Online, 27 November 2018.
“[I did] Some [reading to prep for Expelled]. I read one book cover to cover, From Darwin to Hitler, and that was a very interesting book--one of these rare books I wish had been even longer. It's about how Darwin's theory--supposedly concocted by this mild-mannered saintly man, with a flowing white beard like Santa Claus--led to the murder of millions of innocent people.”
Ben Stein (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have an obligation to read aloud to our children. To read them things they enjoy. To read to them stories we are already tired of. To do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read to themselves.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've just been reading -- stuff to make your hair curl -- you go in that toilet -- that's the sort of stuff people read -- not this sort of thing -- don't you feel out of touch? Does this stuff make money? I bet you're the only person to have read this book -- but I bet you every man in this restaurant has had a read of that stuff in there... makes you think, doesn't it?”
Peter Greenaway (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wouldn't read the book, and I'll tell you why. I wouldna read Mein Kampf either. If I were going to UNC in 1941, and you, professor, said read Mein Kampf, I woulda said, "Hey, professor, with all due respect, shove it. I ain't reading it.”
Bill O'Reilly (commentator) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was a bookish kid. I spent long hours in the library reading everything I could find, histories, biographies, science fiction, fantasy, mysteries. I was curious about the world and there’s no better way to find things out than through the pages of a book. Even today if some kid asks me what’s the first step to take to become a doctor, I answer, “Read, read, read.”
Sanjay Gupta (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I hadn't originally intended to do any reading, what if I did read one book more or one book less, whether I read or not wouldn't make a difference, I would still be waiting to get cremated.”
Gao Xingjian (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was an only child and grew up in a cottage in the Oxfordshire countryside. I was thrown very much on my own resources which consisted of books, books and more books. I used to think I was very deprived by this experience but now I think the opposite. The books I read lying on my bed filled up my imagination and they are the fuel for my creativity now.”
Simon Tolkien (born 1959) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Simon Tolkien (December 6, 2010)
“Flaubert read too many books, and in consequence some of his own books stagger under the weight of his erudition. He said he'd read some preposterous number of books to prepare for the writing of Salammbô, and you can feel them dragging the novel down. It would have been much better if he'd made it all up.”
John Banville (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Read the books that are really messy. Read the books that everybody is telling you are problematic. And actually pick a part that word. When I was teaching, the last quarter of class I had to sort of be like, “we can’t use that word to talk about books because it means absolutely nothing.”
Kaitlyn Greenidge wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Read Homer once, and you can read no more; For all books else appear so mean, so poor, Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read, And Homer will be all the books you need.”
John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1647–1721) said by 1721 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Essay on Poetry (published 1723).
Also quoted by: Sheffield, Duke Of Buckinghamshire
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) said by 1626 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Books don’t have a nutritional value. Which is to say, we don’t just read "good" books because they’re good for us. We read to expand our horizons, to understand and connect with something outside ourselves, good and bad. We read to challenge ourselves…”
Mariko Tamaki (born 1975) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On reading books that might be deemed inappropriate in “We Read To Challenge Ourselves: An Interview With Mariko Tamaki” in Comics Alliance (2016 Jun 24)
“We need to have a way for computers to read books on chemistry and learn chemistry. Or read books on physics and learn physics. Or biology. Or whatever. We just don’t do that today. Our AI programs are handcrafted and knowledge engineered. We will be forever doing that unless we can find out how to build programs that read text, understand text, and learn from text.”
Edward Feigenbaum (born 1936) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had an interesting day's reading yesterday, with the sudden sensation of being in close contact with what I was reading. [...] But as for reading how curious it is: all these books, their lore of the ages, waiting to be embraced but usually slipping out of one's nerveless hands on to the floor. When one reads properly it is as if a third person is present.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter 419, to William Plomer, 12 December 1957
“I think that the online world has actually brought books back. People are reading because they're reading the damn screen. That's more reading than people used to do.”
Bill Murray (born 1950) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Jessica Lee Jernigan (May 1999)
“I learn more from the anatomy of an ant or a blade of grass...than from all the books which have been written since the beginning of time. This is so, since I have begun...to read the book of God...the model according to which I correct the human books which have been copied badly and arbitrarily and without attention to the things that are written in the original book of the Universe.”
Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) first seen 1607 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter of 1607", as cited by Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., 2012, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge University Press, p. 218.