Azar Nafisi Quotes

A good book deserves an active reading. The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging. The undemanding reader fails to satisfy this requirement, probably even more than he fails to analyze and interpret. He not only makes no effort to understand; he also dismisses a book simply by putting it aside and forgetting it. Worse than faintly praising it, he damns it by giving it no critical consideration whatever.

For heaven's sake, don't write writing. Write reading!

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself.

…she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same — you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again.

Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.

It's good to know how to read, but it's dangerous to know how to read and not how to interpret what you're reading.

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.

I think well-read people - the world is open to them.

I don't think there's anything wrong with someone having to read a poem twice. Or even a book.

Reading, like writing, is a creative act. If readers only bring a narrow range of themselves to the book, then they'll only see their narrow range reflected in it.

Reading is No. 1 - I have to read, or I can't write.

Good readers make much out of little.

To be a good editor or a good writer, I think you really need to be a great reader first.

What is reading but silent conversation?

No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.

If I'm reading a book that doesn't leave me with questions, moving questions, that I feel confronted with, then for me it's a waste of time. I don't want to read a book that simply confirms what I already know.

I think that good writing is based on good reading. Maybe it's not about writing today, maybe it's about reading today. Maybe it's about finding the sort of book you would never read.

We are now in want of an art to teach how books are to be read rather than to read them. Such an art is practicable.

It is my contention that the process of reading is part of the process of writing, the necessary completion without which writing can hardly be said to exist.

Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning.

Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters...

We read often with as much talent as we write.

By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.

Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer.