Quotes on “reading”

She was fascinated with words. To her, words were things of beauty, each like a magical powder or potion that could be combined with other words to create powerful spells.

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.

Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.

A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.

Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience.

Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?

Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.

Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree?

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them; but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.

If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency -- the belief that the here and now is all there is.

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.

Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.

You'll never be alone if you’ve got a book.

Reading is not an end to itself, but a means to an end.