Stacy Schiff Quotes

It's a very powerful, emotional thing to read a book, and to reduce it to a series of questions in a test strips something away from the book.

I do think digital media encourages speed-reading, which can be fine if one is simply seeking information. But a serious novel or work of history or volume of poetry is an experience one should savor, take time over.

There are books that are made for you to sit and puzzle over and spend time with.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

He taught me literature, and he actually taught me how to read. He was my personal mentor.

Reading should be a repeat performance.

I read part of it all the way through.

When I read, I'm purely a reader.

At my first library job, I worked with a woman named Sheila Brownstein, who was The Reader's Advisor. She was a short, bosomy Englishwoman who accosted people at the shelves and asked if they wanted advice on what to read, and if the answer was yes, she asked what writers they already loved and then suggested somebody new.

I read very widely, both non-fiction and fiction, so I don't think there's a single writer who influences me.

Read a lot - poems, prose, stories, newspapers, anything. Read books and poems that you think you will like and some that you think might not be for you. You might be surprised.

The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write.

Sometimes novels are considered 'important' in the way medicine is - they taste terrible and are difficult to get down your throat, but are good for you.

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.

For someone who loves literature, and all books on principle, being asked to name three titles over a half century of serious reading is akin to asking one to recall their three favorite sunsets.

Sometimes a book is better than it ever had a right to be because of the history the reader brings to the reading and because of the methods educators use to bring a particular story alive.

I don't think there's anything wrong with someone having to read a poem twice. Or even a book.

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.

I'm happy to see book clubs on TV. Talking about books has always been an important and invigorating part of reading them, and it's nice that that is getting attention from the media.

We're not in love with Literature all the time - especially when you have to teach it every day.

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

I sort of try to read the books when they come out impartially and not make up my mind, but the fact is when I was reading the sixth, 'Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince', there were bits in there where I was going, 'God, I would love to do that because it's so good'.

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.

We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.

The greatest texts, I think, first dazzle, then with careful rereading, they instruct. I have learned from Virginia Woolf more than I even know how to articulate.