Terry Pratchett Quotes

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.

My mom told me I never had enough Tonka toys when I was growing up.

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.

'Jane Eyre' must have been something I read six or seven times as an early adolescent. And 'Kristin Lavransdatter,' and 'Lorna Doone' when I was younger. My parents had a pretty rich library, no jackets on any of the books, so no descriptions. You just pulled something off the shelf and started to read it.

My childhood may have been more demented than most, because I learned to read very early and was allowed to read whatever I wanted.

'Black Beauty,' by Anna Sewell, remains a star-dusted memory because my mom read it aloud to my sister and me at night for months. I was no more than 7.

Many of the books I loved as a kid, that even my mother read as a child, are very slow going. Today's children are not as patient. The best example of this is 'The Secret Garden,' which I adored as a child.

I was fantastically well versed by the time I left school. I had a teacher who put 'A Clockwork Orange' my way, and 'Catcher in the Rye.'

I read very widely, both non-fiction and fiction, so I don't think there's a single writer who influences me.

I agree that a love of reading is a great gift for a parent to pass on to his or her child.

I'd always been a big reader. I credit my mom for giving me my love of reading.

Children are smarter than any of us. Know how I know that? I don't know one child with a full time job and children.

Literature has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can't think back before a time that I didn't love writing and reading. When I was really young, my mother would read poems to me. I loved Edgar Allan Poe - I am sure I didn't understand it, but I loved it.

When I was about 12 or 13, my father gave me 'The Little Prince.' He was making sure that I knew it was a special book. I'd seen the name of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, but to me it seemed a very French name, and I was not excited about him as a person.

For me, when I read a book, I'm very much about detail.

I don't know where my romanticism comes from. My mom and dad would read to me a lot. 'Treasure Island,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' tales of chivalry and knights, things like that. Those are the stories I loved growing up.

I grew up reading 'The Jungle Books' and loving them.

The fate of a child is in the hands of his parents.

I read 'the Hobbit' at the age when you're supposed to read it. I didn't read 'The Lord Of The Rings.' My father, who was an English teacher, advised me that once I had read 'the Hobbit,' that would be enough. I could then move on to Dostoyevsky.

'Moby-Dick' really threw me. I read it when I was 14 and my best friends were books. It changed the way I looked at the world.

Our parents have, by far, the greatest influence on shaping who we are and how we deal with the world.

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.

I was a Nancy Drew girl. Also Grimms' fairy tales.

I've always cared about issues, always thought through problems. I don't know how much that comes from my personality or my mum.

My mother was almost entirely responsible for my cultural education. She took me to the library once a week, and by the age of seven, I was reading 100 books a year.