Richard Ford Quotes

Every single book is a challenge.

I always individuate myself from other writers who say they would die if they couldn't write. For me, I'd die if I couldn't read.

Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book.

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

Two of my three siblings are older, so I suppose I learned from them and became a very avid reader at a young age, which I think enough cannot be said for what you can discover through literature.

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.

Reading changed dreams into life and life into dreams.

I read hungrily and delightedly, and have realized since that you can’t write unless you read.

Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret room Piled high with cases in my father’s name; Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!

Writers are voracious readers. Once I unlocked the mystery of the alphabet that led to words, a multitude of words connecting me to the world, there was no stopping me. Everything was fair game, from Louisa May Alcott to my older cousin's True Romance Magazines, from Lewis Carroll to the backs of cereal boxes. All of this fed me, but it took certain books to make me grow. I don't want to work without a sense of drama, without passion, or without both eyes open to the world around me.

It's funny that I got to do 'On the Road' because the thing that had the biggest impact on me growing up was reading books. I was very inspired by the book and this spirit of Dean Moriarty and how envious we all are of somebody who can be that carefree.

Books stay with me and have shaped me and made huge impacts on my life.

One of the greatest gifts my brother and I received from my mother was her love of literature and language. With their boundless energy, libraries open the door to these worlds and so many others. I urge young and old alike to embrace all that libraries have to offer.

When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

But, for instance, when I was awfully young, I read all the Oz books. They were an enormous influence on me.

I'm passionate about learning. I'm passionate about life.

Read in order to live.

Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.

My passion has always been books and literature, and teaching.

There's only one common element that united every writer I've admired... they're all incredibly well-read.

Books are like my one and only joy.

Books guided my life from high school, and the greatest, most interesting, most provocative, funniest, smartest people who ever lived in the last 200 or 300 years wrote those books. I would fall in love with Victor Hugo and read not just 'Les Miserables,' but 'Bug-Jargal' and 'The Toilers of the Sea' and so forth.

I suppose books are my real passion in life.

When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.