Reading is looked at like it's corny or lame, but you'd be surprised what you can find in a book.
Teenage readers also have a different relationship with the authors whose work they value than adult readers do. I loved Toni Morrison, but I don't have any desire to follow her on Twitter. I just want to read her books.
Child! do not throw this book about Refrain from the unholy pleasure Of cutting all the pictures out! Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.
I suppose I'm an obsessive reader. If I could make a living reading the books I want to read and then telling people about them, I'd pick that over acting.
There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.
I have to admit that I am really partial to the look and feel of a book. I have been that way my entire life.
I don't read books. I like to read newspapers and magazines, but I've never learnt to enjoy books or novels.
Besides, rereading, not reading, is what counts.
One of the more interesting things I've learnt since becoming a writer is that if you like the book, you'll generally like the person. It doesn't always work in reverse - there are huge numbers of lovely people out there writing not very good books.
I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book.
The very cheapness of literature is making even wise people forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it.
One of the most important things in my childhood were the new books that came in. I feel sorry for kids today who have so many other options like television that they may not value books as much as they could enjoy them.
People don't understand how hard it is to get recognized, how hard it is to get people to read your books. How hard it is to get people to even to understand what they're reading when they're talking to you about their books.
What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
I've always loved books.
I always give books. And I always ask for books. I think you should reward people sexually for getting you books. Don't send a thank-you note, repay them with sexual activity. If the book is rare or by your favorite author or one you didn't know about, reward them with the most perverted sex act you can think of. Otherwise, you can just make out.
When I finished reading '100 Years of Solitude,' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I got really sad. I thought, 'This will never happen for me, for the first time, ever again.' Then I opened 'Beauty Is a Wound.' It's a completely different story and writing style, but it has a similar place in my heart now.
Do not, do not, do not books for ever hammer at people like perpetual bells? When, between two books, silent sky appears: be glad
Let every book-worm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it the widest circulation that newspapers and magazines, penny and halfpenny, can afford.
Books, I don't know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them.
A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.
I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.
I mean, when you're tired of book reviews, you're tired of life.
but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.
Say I lived until 80 and read a book a month seriously, that means I was looking at 480 books left in my life. If I had only 480 left, I wanted to stop sifting through material I didn't have confidence in and turn my attention to those that I know merited my reading.
