Maryanne Wolf Quotes

After many years of research on how the human brain learns to read, I came to an unsettlingly simple conclusion: We humans were never born to read.

The ability to write and read books is one of the things that transformed us as a species.

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 am an educator and neuroscientist who studies how the brain learns to read and what happens when a young brain can't learn to read easily, as in the childhood learning challenge, developmental dyslexia.

The kids who speak well, are articulate and intelligent, are all readers.

You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.

The mind of the polyglot is a very particular thing, and scientists are only beginning to look closely at how acquiring a second language influences learning, behavior and the very structure of the brain itself.

The manner in which I learned to read and write, not only had great influence on my own mind, as I acquired it with the most perfect ease, so much so, that I have no recollection whatever of learning the alphabet

The acquisition of literacy is one of the most important epigenetic achievements of Homo sapiens. To our knowledge, no other species ever acquired it.

When we learn to read, it's a real product of civilization and a civilized society. It affects your brain. It affects the way you think, and it gives you that capacity for self-reflection that you simply do not have without the agency of books.

I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano's class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space.

I think the cardinal rule of learning to write is learning to read first. I learned to write by learning to read.

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 finish so many books it's amazing. I'm also doing Rosetta Stone, learning some French.

I still believe that sitting down and reading a book is the best way to really learn something.

It is my desire to break the destructive generational cycle of illiteracy in the home by focusing on the children. Reading to your child has so much value as a parent because it opens the lines of communication.

My earliest memory is learning to read 'Muffin the Mule' when I was about three.

We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.

You have to be literate in today's world. We're not going to get away with not teaching boys to read.

I have said it often and I will say it again: I believe you learn to read when you are young, then read to learn for the rest of your life.

How well he's read, to reason against reading!

Reading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.

If I don't have words, it's a sign I'm not reading enough.

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.

Reading is important.