Writers on Reading

Reading is something that to us bookish kind seems so inherent, so necessary, so commonplace. But, once in a while, I read a quotation that reminds me that to read is a powerful, crucial and magical act. Here is a collection of a few of my favourite quotes about reading by writers…

‘Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.’ - Harper Lee

‘The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.’ - Roald Dahl, Matilda

‘Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.’ - Mark Twain

‘The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.’ - W. Somerset Maugham

‘Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself.’ - Angela Carter

‘I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.’ - Ralph Waldo Emerson

‘You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.’ - C.S. Lewis

‘Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real.’ - Nora Ephron

‘Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.’ - Joyce Carol Oates

‘I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.’ - Jean-Paul Sartre

‘Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.’ - Stephen Fry

‘For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.’ -Anne Lamott

‘If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.’ - J.K. Rowling

‘Literature is my Utopia’ - Helen Keller

‘There is creative reading as well as creative writing.’ - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Which of these quotes resonates with you? And what does reading mean to you?