Italo Calvino Quotes

Traditionally, the love of reading has been born and nurtured in high school English class

The one constant in my life has been my love of books: reading them, thinking about them, talking about them, holding them, turning people on to new ones.

I love books so much. I've read more books than anyone else I know.

As a bookish adolescent, I sopped up texts as if I were blotting paper and they were fluid.

I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book.

I mean, when you're tired of book reviews, you're tired of life.

I don't even know how people read new fiction anymore because there's so much old fiction that exists that seems great that's unread. It's overwhelming to me. But, I mean, I do read. But there probably haven't been many people less literate than me that have been in 'The Paris Review.'

I started reading literature at 17 or 18, and I felt this extra beat to life.

Literature is capable of being a subject that people want to catch up on or discuss, whether at a coffee shop or a watercooler. It can become an intrinsic part of their dialogue.

He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.

I've been an inveterate reader of literary magazines since I was a teenager. There are always discoveries. You're sitting in your easy chair, reading; you realize you've read a story or a group of poems four times, and you know, Yes, I want to go farther with this writer.

When a new book is published, read an old one.

You hear all this whining going on, 'Where are our great writers?' The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?

There is no denying the aesthetics of a well-made, well-loved book.

When I was twelve, Uncle Randall looked up long enough to see that I was a reader as well, so he walked me down his hall to a linen-closet door and opened it up onto a wall of paperbacks. There were books behind books, as deep in as I could reach. He told me to take three, and when I was done, bring them back and take three more.

I did the traditional thing with falling in love with words, reading books and underlining lines I liked and words I didn't know. It was something I always did.

I'm ashamed to admit this, but I didn't read a novel all the way through until after high school. Blasphemy, I know. I'm an author now. Books and words are my world.

It's different in Scotland. People who come to readings are more interested in literature as such, but the readership in general is really quite diverse. It's a cliche, but it's said that people who read my books don't read any other books, and you do get that element.

My whole background was in voracious book-reading.

You need to cultivate love for books, it doesn't come to everyone naturally.

I read almost everything that comes my way.

Reading is so private, and it is often a reader's habit to finish a book, close the covers, and plunge into the next one without a backward glance.

I think I write in order to discover on my shelf a new book that I would enjoy reading, or to see a new play that would engross me.

I was kind of reading you know Judy Blume and stuff like that. But yeah, but I've since educated myself.

I began reading everyhing in the family library. Kidnapped, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe. And of course, if you're running out of books to read you can always read Shakespeare.