Reading quotes
Welcome to our collection of Reading quotes! Whether you are an avid bookworm, a student buried in textbooks, or simply enjoy immersing yourself in the written word, this category is sure to inspire and resonate with you. Reading is not just a hobby or a form of entertainment; it is a gateway to knowledge, imagination, and self-discovery.
Within these pages, you will find a treasure trove of perspectives on the power of reading. From renowned authors to influential leaders, these quotes celebrate the joy of getting lost in a good book, the transformative effect of words on our minds and hearts, and the everlasting impact of literature on society.
Explore the wisdom and insight shared by literary legends, philosophers, activists, and thinkers from all walks of life. Discover how reading broadens our horizons, deepens our empathy, and allows us to connect with others across time and space. Whether you prefer classic novels, thought-provoking essays, or contemporary fiction, these quotes will remind you of the profound impact that books have on our lives.
So grab a cup of tea, find a cozy spot, and embark on a journey through the pages of these Reading quotes. Be inspired to pick up a new book, revisit an old favorite, or share the magic of reading with those around you. Let these words ignite your passion for literature and encourage you to continue exploring the world through the written word.
Kathryn Stockett
— NovelistGreat books give you a feeling that you miss all day, until you finally get to crawl back inside those pages again.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorMy first love was reading, which inspired me to write.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterI cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.
Sarah Vowell
— AuthorNo one I know actually reads what I write, so thank heavens for you strangers.
E. B. White
— Versatile Writer & Author of Beloved ClassicsReading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesI'm no prophet, but I'm guessing that comic books will always be strong. I don't think anything can really beat the pure fun and pleasure of holding a magazine in your hand, reading the story on paper, being able to roll it up and put it in your pocket, reread again later, show it to a friend, carry it with you, toss it on a shelf, collect them, have a lot of magazines lined up and read them again as a series. I think young people have always loved that. I think they always will.
Mary Ellen Chase
— New England's Literary VoiceThere is no substitute for books in the life of a child.
M. F. K. Fisher
— Pioneering Food WriterFor anyone addicted to reading commonplace books . . . finding a good new one is much like enduring a familiar recurrence of malaria, with fever, fits of shaking, strange dreams . . . .
Ed McBain
— American author and screenwriterI wanted to be an artist. I was studying art. I wanted to be a great painter. When I went into the Navy, there wasn't much to draw at sea. So I began writing, and I began reading a lot.
Will Ferrell
— American actor, comedian, producer, and writerA lot of the times you read something and you don't realize that you are going to have to do the things that you read.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterI think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love.
Sarah Vowell
— AuthorA couple of times he called the second he'd finished reading a novel and just had to tell me about it, and I know it sounds hokey and librarianish to say so, but I just swooned when he did that.
E. B. White
— Versatile Writer & Author of Beloved ClassicsBooks hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together-just the two of you.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesThe only advice anybody can give is, if you wanna be a writer, keep writing. And read all you can, read everything.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorReading yields a wish to write, I think, except if the reading is dull and uninspiring.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterLet others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.
E. B. White
— Versatile Writer & Author of Beloved ClassicsWalden is the only book I own, although there are some others unclaimed on my shelves. Every man, I think, reads one book in his life, and this is mine. It is not the best book I ever encountered, perhaps, but it is for me the handiest, and I keep it about me in much the same way one carries a handkerchief - for relief in moments of defluxion or despair.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesI think any comic book - or really, any book that you can read - in a sense is an educational tool in that it helps literacy. The more you read, the better you get at it. It almost doesn't matter what you read, the important thing is for young people to become readers.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorThat is the mystery: Reading Henry James can yield prose that is contrary to James, yet inspired by him. Who can understand this?
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterThe man who acquires an encyclopedia does not thereby acquire every line, every paragraph, every page, and every illustration; he acquires the possibility of becoming familiar with one and another of those things.
E. B. White
— Versatile Writer & Author of Beloved ClassicsIn order to read one must sit down, usually indoors. I am restless and would rather sail a boat than crack a book. I've never had a very lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. Except that I write for a living.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesReading is very good. And you can quote me!
Joyce Carol Oates
— Authorthe art of reading hardly differs from the art of writing, in that its most intense pleasures and pains must remains private, and cannot be communicated to others.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterBesides, rereading, not reading, is what counts.
E. B. White
— Versatile Writer & Author of Beloved ClassicsAs in the sexual experience, there are never more than two persons present in the act of reading-the writer, who is the impregnator, and the reader, who is the resspondent. This gives the experience of reading a sublimity and power unequalled by any other form of communication.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesI think the way you become a good storyteller is to read a lot of stories and evaluate them in your own mind.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorI have read on a Kindle. But the Kindle we had only worked for about eight months then it stopped working. You don't have to get books repaired.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterA book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesMy biggest regret is that I don't really have time to read.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorThe written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterReading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesWhen I was a kid, I loved reading Sherlock Holmes. Now, you don't think of him as a superhero, but he was so damn much smarter than anybody else.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorAs a farm girl, even when I was quite young, I had my 'farm chores' - but I had time also to be alone, to explore the fields, woods and creek side. And to read.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterLiterature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesI think almost everybody enjoyed fairy tales when they were young, tales of witches and ogres and monsters and dragons and so forth. You get a little bit older, you can't read fairy tales any more.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorI don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterI am interested in the past. Perhaps one of the reasons is we cannot make, cannot change the past. I mean you can hardly unmake the present. But the past after all is merely to say a memory, a dream. You know my own past seems continually changed when I am remembering it, or reading things that are interesting to me.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesThe more you read, the better you're going to become as a storyteller.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorReading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterMy father gave me free run of his library. When I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books I read.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesYou can read a Shakespeare play, but does that mean you wouldn't want to see it on the stage?
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorRead widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterIm merely a dreamer, and then a writer, and my happiest moments are when I'm a reader.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesThere's just something that feels nice about holding a comic book!
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorThe books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the New York Review of Books, and substantial.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterI think of myself primarily as a reader, then also a writer, but that's more or less irrelevant. I think I'm a good reader, I'm a good reader in many languages, especially in English, since poetry came to me through the English language, initially through my father's love of Swinburn, of Tennyson, and also of Keats, Shelley and so on - not through my native tongue, not through Spanish. It came to me as a kind of spell. I didn't understand it, but I felt it.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorI am always reading or thinking about reading.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterIn the course of a life devoted less to living than to reading, I have verified many times that literary intentions and theories are nothing more than stimuli and that the final work usually ignores or even contradicts them.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorEven as a young child, I was a lover of books and of the spaces in which, as indeed in a sacred temple, books might safely reside.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorI read books. Avidly, ardently! As if my life depended upon it.