Reading Books Quotes

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“You know that feeling,” she said, “when you are reading a book, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the cold and darkness coming, see the net drawing tight around the characters who live and breathe on the pages. But you are tied to the story as if being dragged behind a carriage and you cannot let go or turn the course aside.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Princess

“Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.”
― Alberto Manguel, A Reading Diary: A Passionate Reader's Reflections on a Year of Books

“You're never alone when you're reading a book.”
― Susan Wiggs

“[I] read books because I love them, not because I think I should read them.”
― Simon Van Booy

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation... A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.”
― Henry Miller, The Books in My Life

“Take some books and read; that’s an immense help; and books are always good company if you have the right sort.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't read all the time -- none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads--and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”
― Charles T. Munger, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

“She'd become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she loved to read.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

“For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.”
― Louis L'Amour

“Life is too short to read books that I'm not enjoying.”
― Melissa Marr

“Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.”
― E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel

“I am a grenade," I said again. "I just want to stay away from people and read books and think and be with you guys because there's nothing I can do about hurting you: You're too invested, so just please let me do that, okay?

"I'm going to go to my room and read for awhile, okay? I'm fine. I really am fine: I just want to go read for a while.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“I'm pretty sure my addiction to reading has just reached a whole new level.”
― Colleen Hoover, Hopeless

“Clearly one must read every good book at least once every ten years.”
― C.S. Lewis

“I go back to the reading room, where I sink down in the sofa and into the world of The Arabian Nights. Slowly, like a movie fadeout, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favourite feeling in the world.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“I read like the flame reads the wood.”
― Alfred Döblin

“I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Collected Dorothy Parker

“People who say they don't have time to read simply don't want to.”
― Julie Rugg, A Book Addict's Treasury

“Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter.”
― Paxton Hood

“Maybe reading was just a way to make her feel less alone, to keep her company. When you read something you are stopped, the moment is stayed, you can sometimes be there more fully than you can in your real life.”
― Helen Humphreys, Coventry

“Books fall open, you fall in”
― David McCord

“An entire life spent reading would have fulfilled my every desire; I already knew that at the age of seven. The texture of the world is painful, inadequate; unalterable, or so it seems to me. Really, I believe that an entire life spent reading would have suited me best. Such a life has not been granted me...”
― Michel Houellebecq, Whatever

“If you have read 6,000 books in your lifetime, or even 600, it's probably because at some level you find 'reality' a bit of a disappointment.”
― Joe Queenan, One for the Books

“إن الكتب مثل الناس فيهم السيد الوقور وفيهم الكيس الظريف وفيهم الجميل الرائع وفيهم الساذج الصادق وفيهم الأديب والمخطئ والخائن والجاهل والوضيع والخليع”
― عباس محمود العقاد

“...there are so many books left to read. For that reason alone it is worth going on living. Books make me happy, the help me escape from reality.”
― Félix J. Palma, The Map of the Sky

“Each time we come to a book we give it a different reading because we bring a different person to it. It is not you who reads the book, the book reads you”
― Jack Lasenby, The Shaman and the Droll

“Before this generation lose the wisdom, one advice - read books.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or gravely. For he will read 'in the same spirit that the author writ.'... He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison.”
― C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism