Quotes about reading
116 quotes from 88 people
Why did people ask “What is it about?” as if a novel had to be about only one thing.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichieborn 1977Americanah (2013)Parents should leave books lying around marked “forbidden” if they want their children to read.
Doris Lessing1919–2013Interview with Amanda Craig, “Grand dame of letters who’s not going quietly”, The Times (London, 23 November 2003, reprinted 3 June 2004)I have found out that reading is a slavish sort of dreaming. If I must dream, why not my own dreams?
Fernando Pessoa1888–1935Apontamentos pessoais [“Autobiographical Notes”] (1910)
Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849Marginalia (November 1844)
Ben Jonson1572–1637To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare (First Folio, 1623), lines 22-24
Umberto Eco1932–2016The Name of the Rose (1980), William of Baskerville
William Makepeace Thackeray1811–1863The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 42.
George Orwell1903–1950Charles Dickens (1939)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge1772–1834Letter to Thomas Poole (16 October 1797); ed. Griggs (1956), vol. 1, p. 354Let no man who is not a Mathematician read the elements of my work.
Leonardo da Vinci1452–1519The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, tr. J. P. Richter, I: Prolegomena
George MacDonald1824–1905The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
W. E. B. Du Bois1868–1963The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. VI: “Of the Training of Black Men”In context“and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”
