J. M. Coetzee Quotes

Childhood reading is so important.

Pretty much every night of their lives, my 8-year-old sons have absorbed themselves entirely in books. As toddlers, they pointed out pictures, made conjectures; lately, we find them in their bunk beds embarked upon two-hour comic-reading benders.

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.

As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read.

It distresses me that parents insist that their children read or make them read. The best way for children to treasure reading is to see the adults in their lives reading for their own pleasure.

I don't want to approach reading from the viewpoint of that it's a pleasant adjunct to your life. I want to approach it from the idea that you have to read or you're going to suffer. There's a difference to be made - and you can make it if you read with your child.

I hate the idea of any kid missing out on the magic of reading.

Anything that gets children reading is fine.

If you read in front of your kids, it's very likely that they'll become readers, too.

In a sense, there's a great truth to that, but, also I was a great reader.

With reading, I was very lucky. I had a mother who read to me, not because she had time - she was a busy woman - but she found 10 minutes to come and sit on my bed with a book.

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

We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional.

Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.

I read a whole lot as a child, and, of course, I still read children's books.

Writers don't write writing, they write reading. When I was a kid, I read four or five books a week. And that is how I became a writer.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

Anything that encourages a boy to open a book, in a world of more violent and therefore more compelling video games, is something I'm going to pay for.

I have a great deal of sympathy for reluctant readers because I was one. I would do anything to avoid reading. In my case, it wasn't until I was 13 and discovered the 'Lord of the Rings' that I learned to love reading.

Of course, I've always read. I started when I was four years old and just didn't stop. I read all the time.

I was always a big reader, mostly because my parents were.

Obviously, every child should be given the best possible opportunity to acquire literacy skills.

I never stopped reading.

I think that being read to every night is the reason why I was plowing through volume after volume of 'Nancy Drew' books all by myself by the time I reached the first grade. I loved stories. I loved the escape. I had a vivid imagination.

Every generation likes to think that children don't read as much as they used to when they were young! You listen to some adults saying they were going around reading 'Ulysses' when they were seven or eight! I think children are voracious readers if you give them the right books and if you make those books accessible to them.