Jonathan Lethem Quotes

I think kids are excited by language, and they're not always given credit for that.

I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

Everything I worry about would be better if more people could read, write and comprehend.

Reading and writing is so important, and it's something I am really keen to promote. It's something that can be a bit lost these days with so much else going on.

There's definitely a value in being literate.

Illiteracy is rampant. People are out of communication.

I often pick up papers and books which have all kinds of pictures and marks in them, but I cannot understand them as a white person does. They have a way of communicating by the use of written symbols and figures; but before they could do that, they had to have an understanding among themselves. You are learning that, and I was very much pleased to hear you are reading.

If you took my reading and writing out of my head, I don't know who I would be.

I love to read. I'm still pen pals with my ninth-grade English teacher, Mr. Shanley. He tells me what books to read.

We humans invented literacy, which means it doesn't come for free with our genes like speech and vision. Every brain has to learn it afresh.

I learned reading and writing from my mother.

Illiterates have to dictate.

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.

Reading is more important than writing.

Creative writing and literacy go hand and hand.

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

Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.

I love the English language. Words have power.

Some people read. I like to put words together.

Reading is essential to human life. When the last reader dies, humanity will be at an end.

Writing is more important than being a writer.

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

There is an art of reading, an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

All my life I have been trying to learn to read, to see and hear, and to write.