O. Henry Quotes

Anything that gets children reading is fine.

I was a very un-literary child, which might reassure parents with kids who don't read.

The big problem is just this kind of gigantic piece, of kids reading less and liking it less and so getting worse at it. It's kind of this terrible spiral: Since they're not so good at it they do less of it, get worse at it, do less of it. And it's really what I discovered five, six years ago when I started the 'Guys Read' thing.

I have said it often and I will say it again: I believe you learn to read when you are young, then read to learn for the rest of your life.

When I was a child and teenager I read whenever I had the opportunity, but since then I've found it hard to read as much as I'd like, children, work, and pets all providing powerful incentives to escape into a book and a practical reason why I rarely do so.

I don't remember ever having finished a book.

Now, my mom did not read well and she read 'True Romance' magazines, but she read with me. And she would spend 30 minutes a day, her finger going along the page, and I learned to read. Eventually, by the time I was four and a half, she could iron and I could sit there and read the 'True Romance.' And that was wonderful.

When I was younger, I suppose I was interested in checking out as much about writing as I could: bad, weird, irritating, even things not-to-my-taste. Now I am less open. I will decide after a few pages if I want to stay in the world of the book, and if I don't, I put it down. I have less time left.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

I'm still not a great reader, but my wife is and my daughters are, and I envy them. I think I got into a bad habit of trying to do something all the time, instead of trying to sit down and take my time a little bit.

Once you create this thing between duty and reading, it's over. Reading's over.

I think for me I was in kindergarten, so I was very young and my teacher acknowledged that I was very dyslexic when it came to reading and writing and processing that information.

I'm not a great reader, believe it or not. It's not the vocabulary - my father made me read the dictionary when I was little - but my attention span is poor. Takes me months to read one book.

Reading makes all other learning possible. We have to get books into our children's hands early and often.

You're investing in a different part of your life that is really important. It's not as important when you're a kid and you don't require sleep, and you don't get hung over, and you can fire on all cylinders. At 32 I don't consider myself old by any means, but you just find yourself in a place where you can't do everything the way you once did, and you have to take time to reflect and I think that's really important, because you get to appreciate what you have, and to enjoy it.

I'm not a good reader. I had to take remedial reading in school. I was a slow reader and therefore it's tough for me to stay interested in things long enough, I've read, probably, since college maybe 10 books, which is disgusting.

... it occurred to me that never again would he be seven years, one month and six days old, so we had better catch these moments while we can.

Time is a seedfield; in youth we sow it with causes; in after life we reap the harvest of effects.

When the playing is over, one can sense that one's youth has been spent playing a game, and now both the game and youth are gone.

If you want to work on the core problem, it's early school literacy.

In my thirties I was doing it, in my forties I was organizing it and now, unfortunately, I can only talk about it.

I was never much of a reader. I'm a slow reader, which is unusual, because I'm so into language and I love words so much. But it's hard for me to read.

the real evidence of growing older is that things level off in importance ... Days are no longer jagged peaks to climb; time is a meadow, and we move over it with level steps.

Time can be such a menace to a man. By this age do that; by that age do better.

I remember when I used to have actual time to write and now you don't have time and you just do it. I think it explains a lot about television.