Reading Priorities Quotes

It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all.

My main source of reading is scripts, which doesn't leave a whole lot of room for books.

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.

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

Of books in our time the variety is so voluminous, and they follow so fast from the press, that one must be a swift reader to acquaint himself even with their titles, and wise to discern what are worth reading.

I don't have any thoughts on blogs, because I don't read them. I don't read them not out of any principle, but because there are only 24 hours in a day, and I like to read books.

There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere.

People should be interested in books, not their authors.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.

Honestly, I haven't the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.

I'll read anything Anne Carson writes, anything J. M. Coetzee writes, and anything Cormac McCarthy writes. I'll drop whatever I'm doing to read a new Mary Ruefle essay.

There's so many good books, but I'm always like, "I'm sorry, I have five more Faulkners to read, I can't be bothered." Most of the time when you try, you fall on the wrong one.

A small number of choice books are sufficient.

I'm embarrassed to say this, but I shy away from memoirs. My feeling is always that I'm saving them for later, so I guess that means I'll reach a point when I read nothing else.

I guess when Rick is finished with his Journey to the Centre of the Earth, then we might have a go at something. We'd like to, we're open to it, and we've been talking about it.

In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature the oldest.

Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarily deflected from your chosen path.

I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to literature and theory. I wish I could have more of that in life, but I don't because I'm always reading scripts or things to prepare for movies when I'm reading.

What you don't read is often as important as what you do read.

If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited.

Books take their place according to their specific gravity as surely as potatoes in a tub.

To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I've got books I need to read.

Few are sufficiently sensible of the importance of that economy in reading which selects, almost exclusively, the very first order of books. Why, except for some special reason, read an inferior book, at the very time you might be reading one of the highest order?