John Ruskin Quotes

This will never be a civilized country until we spend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

I was the kind of kid whose parents would drop him off at the local town library on their way to work, and I'd go and work my way through the children's area.

My father was an engineer - he wasn't literary, not a writer or a journalist, but he was one of the world's great readers. Every two weeks, he'd take me to our local branch library and pull books off the shelf for me, stacking them up in my arms - 'Have you read this? And this? And this?'

I came from a home where everybody had a book.

Why buy a book when you can join a library.

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them.

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

What I care about is readers because without readers I can't make a living... And I think it's a bad thing for the world if people don't read anymore. I want people to read a lot.

Children have to have access to books, and a lot of children can't go to a store and buy a book. We need not only our public libraries to be funded properly and staffed properly, but our school libraries. Many children can't get to a public library, and the only library they have is a school library.

To be a writer, you must be a reader, yet as many as 30 per cent of my writing students were not readers.

I am a bookworm.

The City That Reads

We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.

I'm a bookworm.

I'm not embarrassed about not having read any book.

Public libraries were a huge source of comfort and joy for me when I was growing up. I still spend time there.

I got my first library card, for Hendon Library in north London, when I was two years old.

My grandfather and mother were school teachers, so there was always some discussion around books.

In some ways I grew up in the public library in Troy, Michigan.

I try to read as much as I can.

I don't care what you read, as long as you're reading something 'cause when you read somethin', you're learning somethin'.

Shout for libraries. Shout for the young readers who use them.

Reading is important. Books are important. Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)

The one thing I wished for my children is that they'd be readers.

I've just always been a reader. My grandmother just expressed the importance of literacy, if I said that correctly. She just always expressed the importance of being able to write and being able to read.