Ross Gay Quotes

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

So I grew up in a very book-friendly environment and my education as a writer was reading. I think that's the best education. Reading, and taking from the people I admired.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

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.

Reading has been the fuel of my motivation: it has changed the direction in which I have traveled, and it has enhanced my creative imagination more than any other activity I have ever pursued.

I had three brilliant English teachers at secondary school. They found the writer in me.

When I was thirteen, I was in a supermarket with my mother, and for no reason at all, I picked up a science-fiction book at the checkout stand and started reading it. I couldn't believe I was doing that, actually reading a book. And, man, it opened up a whole new thing. Reading became the sparkplug of my imagination.

Read something of interest every day - something of interest to you, not to your teacher or your best friend or your minister/rabbi/priest. Comics count. So does poetry. So do editorials in your school newspaper. Or a biography of a rock star. Or an instructional manual. Or the Bible.

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.

Throughout my career as a lawyer, teacher and labor leader, books have remained my constant companion - stuffed into a briefcase, overflowing on my bedside table, stacked on my desk at work. Books have carried me to distant worlds, opened new doors and made me feel empathy, compassion, anger, fear, joy, acceptance - and everything in between.

In reading, we are both scientists and poets.

I made use of the college library by borrowing books other than scientific books, such as all of the plays by George Bernard Shaw, the writing of Edgar Allan Poe. The college library helped me to develop a broader aspect on life.

I guess the important thing for young writers is to read.

When I was a freshman in college I went to Grinnell College in Iowa. I brought my poems to my freshman humanities teacher whose name was Carol Parsinan, a wonderful teacher. And Carol did a really great thing for me. She taught me more than anyone.

At a young age, I was interested in comic books, which was really how I learnt to read. The name Cage came from a comic book character called Power Man.

I owe the little formal education I got to my drama teacher, Mr. Pickett, who got us to read Shakespeare, Moliere, and other classics.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

It is important to be well read, at least a little bit.

All summer, I read fiction because you must read for the pleasure and beauty of it, and not only for research. I don't read thrillers, romance or mystery, and I don't read self-help books because I don't believe in shortcuts and loopholes.

I have a huge passion for literature.

Before college, I hadn't voluntarily read anything that might be called literature; I didn't think I'd understand it; I never seemed to understand my English teacher's interpretations of what we read.

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

One of the first serious attempts I made to write a novel was when I was in Grade 6 and I had read 'Matilda.' I wrote my own version and my teacher had it bound and permitted me to read it to the class - cementing my love of reading, writing and Roald Dahl!

I don't think I've ever read poetry, ever. I'm not really book-smart.

I always loved reading. Growing up, my favorite book was 'A Child's Garden of Verses,' by Robert Louis Stevenson.