C. S. Lewis Quotes

I developed a prejudice in high school that it was all going to be boring. That kind of teenage, why-do-I-have-to-read-these-goddamn-classics feeling. And then you discover that the classics are classics because they're lively. They don't stick around because they're boring. If they're boring, they go away.

Is 'The Wind in the Willows' a children's book? Is 'Alice in Wonderland?' Is 'Treasure Island?' These are masterpieces which we read with pleasure as children, but with how much more pleasure when we are grown-up.

There are certain books that should be taken away from young writers; that should be prised out of their clutching fingers and locked away until they are all grown up and ready to read them without being smitten.

The Classics are those books which constitute a treasured experience for those who have read and loved them; but they remain just as rich an experience for those who reserve the chance to read them for when they are in the best condition to enjoy them.

When I was 8, I was reading 'Gone with the Wind' and 'Pride and Prejudice' and all that, not knowing it wasn't my reading level.

In science, read by preference the newest works. In literature, read the oldest. The classics are always modern.

My advice is this. For Christ's sake, don't write a book that is suitable for a kid of 12 years old, because the kids who read who are 12 years old are reading books for adults. I read all of the James Bond books when I was about 11, which was approximately the right time to read James Bond books.

A lot of people worry much too much about what their children are reading... If a child picks up a book and reads something she has a question about, if she can go to her parents, great. Or else they will read right over it. It won't mean a thing. They are very good, I think, at monitoring what makes them feel uncomfortable. If something makes them feel uncomfortable they will put it down.

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.

if a book is not good enough for a grownup, it is not good enough for a child.

All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.

My great-aunt. . . . said nobody under 18 had any business reading Dickens. . . . She was right.

A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get.

I'm wondering what to read next." Matilda said. "I've finished all the children's books.

Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us.

I doubt if I shall ever have time to read the book again -- there are too many new ones coming out all the time which I want to read. Yet an old book has something for me which no new book can ever have -- for at every reading the memories and atmosphere of other readings come back and I am reading old years as well as an old book.

Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty - and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.

There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.

Most of the literary classics are worth reading, if you've nothing better to do.

There are books that one needs maturity to enjoy just as there are books an adult can come on too late to savor.

It certainly is my opinion that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.

Reading Chekhov was just like the angels singing to me.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Clearly one must read every good book at least once every ten years.

I think parents should know what their children are reading, and if they truly object, they should tell their kids why, rather than summarily removing a book from their possession.