Isabel Allende Quotes

By the end of high school I was not of course an educated man, but I knew how to try to become one.

My wife read Narc as well and was really into it.

Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.

I've always read broadly: literary fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, chick lit, historical, dystopian, nonfiction, memoir. I've even read Westerns. I prefer female protagonists.

Literature has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can't think back before a time that I didn't love writing and reading. When I was really young, my mother would read poems to me. I loved Edgar Allan Poe - I am sure I didn't understand it, but I loved it.

We didn't have a television, so I grew up with books. This isn't to suggest I'm an intellectual, but I do read a lot because part of acting is an exploration of literature.

People who read fiction are different from other people because they are people who are interested in an imagined world.

College isn't the only answer. Reading is a college that you can and should attend all your life.

The more you know about the world, the more resources you have in terms of things that can inform your character or the circumstances that surround your character.

When reading fiction, we cannot automatically assume that what we read is fact.

People really need to take time and read a book. You know? That’s my advice. You could read A New Slant on Life, you could read Dianetics. And I think if you really read it, you’ll understand it, but unless you do, you’ll speculate. And I think that’s a mistake to do that.

In fact the experience at Oxford has really helped me later in life.

The MFA program did one great thing for me: It taught me how to be a better reader and critic. Nothing I wrote during my time at Columbia remains - but learning how to really deconstruct a work of fiction - that, of course, is a permanent part of me now.

What I want is to try and get across the idea that reading for pleasure is so beneficial. And turn children on who have maybe been switched off reading or never found a love of it in the first place.

If people want to be better writers, they can't just read the blogs! You've got to look at something that's outside this rushing world of evanescent words.

I read books all the time. I'm just half looking for something to do; I mostly just read for pleasure. Occasionally I stumble across something that could be a movie, but I don't put a book down just because I don't see a movie in it, either.

The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.

We had a few non-fiction books at home, but my dad was of the opinion that fiction was a complete and utter waste of time because it wasn't real - so what was the point of reading it?

I wanted to be a poet when I was 20; I had no interest in fiction or biography and precious little interest in history, but those three elements in my life have become the most important.

That's the beauty of education, kids taking lessons out of the classroom and back into their own world where they can positively affect their family, their friends, and their greater community.

Yes, I don't read books for entertainment.

My university work was not central to my education.

English fiction was something I loved growing up, and it changed my life - it changed the trajectory of my life.

All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.

When I was teaching English and trying to get kids passionate about reading, the most effective weapon I had was 'The Martian Chronicles.'