Phyllis A. Whitney Quotes

Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.

And books, they offer one hope -- that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.

My grandfather says that's what books are for," Ashoke said, using the opportunity to open the volume in his hands. "To travel without moving an inch.

It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere.

That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch.

I grew up in a small town in India, but through books I knew the world.

Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.

I had this desire to see the world. I couldn't see any of it, but I saw it in my imagination, and that's why I always read books, and I could go to Mars or Middle Earth or the Hyborian age.

I read a lot of highly unsuitable books for an 11-year-old. I was desperate to read as widely as possible. I thought, 'There are so many places I am never going to get the chance to visit, but I can if I read them.' And I did. I could go anywhere in the world - and off it - by reading.

Growing up, I never gave a thought to being a writer. All I ever wanted to be was a traveler and explorer. Science-fiction allowed me to go places that were otherwise inaccessible, which is why I started reading it. I was going to be a lawyer, but I got saved.

I don't want to turn 50 and say, 'Gosh, I wish I'd lived in that part of the world for a time. I wish I'd read that book by Faulkner.' I want time to delve back into Thoreau and Kafka.

I wanted to escape Small Town U.S.A. To dismiss the boundaries, to explore. My life experience came from watching movies, TV, and reading books and magazines. When your culture comes from watching TV everyday, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities.

Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.

Books are time machines, transporting us out of our own lives into other times and other places.

Books were my Internet, my TV, my movies all rolled into one.

I like to read, even though it was really tough, because I could go anywhere in the world in a book, and I could have so many adventures in a book.

My family didn't have money to travel, so reading was how I knew about the world. It made me hungry to have more experiences than just what I could possibly experience in Arkansas.

Growing up in the hot Last Vegas desert, all I wanted was to be free. I would daydream about traveling the world, living in a place where it snowed, and I would picture all of the stories that I would go on to tell.

The beauty of reading is that it lets you travel in a way you could never know.

I've often thought books give you - put you in a world that you never thought you could go. And I often would say, I don't need to go to California. Give me a book that talks about California. And I can put it in my head and imagine what it looked like.

I would read. I would explore

Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.

Travel, like dreams, is a door that opens from the real world into a world that is yet to be discovered

When you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.