Joseph Epstein Quotes

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...

What is reading but silent conversation?

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 a book is like re-writing it for yourself.

Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.

Besides, rereading, not reading, is what counts.

Reading enables us to see with the keenest eyes, to hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

I love it when people want to interpret my books.

The most interesting letters I received about 'The Name of the Rose' were from people in the Midwest that maybe didn't understand exactly, but wanted to understand more and who were excited by this picture of a world which was not their own.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Read, read, read, read and then read some more.

I do a lot of readings.

The biggest impact my father had on my life was teaching the importance of literacy.

Reading is important.

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

The reader has to be creative when he's reading. He has to try to make the thing alive. A good reader has to do a certain amount of work when he is reading.

For people who are readers, reading is important to them.

Read, read, read. Read good books. You will strengthen your understanding of story. Your vocabulary will be the richer for it.

Speak not of what you have read, but about what you have understood.

Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

When reading fiction, we cannot automatically assume that what we read is fact.

We are not only what we read. We are how we read.

The important thing is that you 'read!'

In reading, we are both scientists and poets.