Popular quotes about Read! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.
Terry PratchettI think most people read and re-read the things that they have liked. That's certainly true in my case. I re-read Pound a great deal, I re-read Williams, I re-read Thomas, I re-read the people whom I cam to love when I was at what you might call a formative stage.
James LaughlinReading has always brought me pure joy. I read to encounter new worlds and new ways of looking at the world. I read to enlarge my horizons, to gain wisdom, to experience beauty, to understand myself better, and for the pure wonderment of it all. I read and marvel over how writers use language in ways I never thought of. I read for company, and for escape. Because I am incurably interested in the lives of other people, both friends and strangers, I read to meet myriad folks and enter their lives- for me, a way of vanquishing the โothernessโ we all experience.
Nancy PearlRead at least one book a month. This is self-serving, obviously. It's a proven fact that people who read buy more books than people who don't read. In truth, I wish you'd read ten books a month, or at least buy that many.
Randy PauschKids should read whatever they want to read. So I'm hoping that just like 15-year-olds read "Summer Sisters," I'm hoping that they'll read this.
Judy BlumeRead, Read, and then Read some more. Always Read. Find the voices that speak most to YOU. This is your pleasure and blessing, as well as responsibility!
Naomi Shihab NyeThe second suggestion is to think as well as to read. I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as well cut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to drink. They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole object being motion. They will tell you how many books they have read in a year. Unless you give at least 45 minutes to careful, fatiguing reflection (it is an awful bore at first) upon what you are reading, your 90 minutes of a night are chiefly wasted.
Arnold BennettA lot of actors choose parts by the scripts, but I don't trust reading the scripts that much. I try to get some friends together and read a script aloud. Sometimes I read scripts and record them and play them back to see if there's a movie. It's very evocative; it's like a first cut because you hear 'She walked to the door,' and you visualize all these things. 'She opens the door' . . . because you read the stage directions, too.
Al PacinoWhatever you read, read the Bible first. Beware of bad books: there are plenty in this day. Take heed what you read.
J. C. RyleI studied piano from the age of three. My grandmother taught piano. I stayed at her house during the day while my parents worked. I obviously wanted to learn to play. And so she asked if she could teach me, and my mother said don't you think she's too young. My grandmother apparently said no. So I could read music before I could read, and I really don't remember learning to read music. So for me it's like a native language. When I look at a sheet of music, it just makes sense.
Condoleezza RiceSome people act as if it were demeaning to their manhood to wish to be well-read but you can no more be a healthy person mentally without reading substantial books than you can be a vigorous person physically without eating solid food. Books should be chosen, not for their freedom from evil, but for their possession of good. Dr. Johnson said: "Whilst you stand deliberating which book your son shall read first, another boy has read both."
Earl NightingaleIt is always sort of unnerving to hear from people who've read my books. I'm not reading any of the reviews and most of my friends haven't read it - they bought it, which is all I frankly care about, but they haven't read it.
Hanya YanagiharaReading was my first solitary vice (and led to all others). I read while I ate, I read in the loo, I read in the bath. When I was supposed to be sleeping, I was reading.
Germaine GreerI remember being in the public library and my jaw just aching as I looked around at all those books I wanted to read. There just wasn't time enough to read everything I wanted to read.
Charles KuraltIt's really hard to teach me anything. I can't read music. I never learned how to read music. I read books about things and try to learn - I don't like to learn from anybody. Later on I would, once I'd get the hang of things. Like I ride horses, I'm good at that, Western riding. I learned all about it reading and studying. I'm always learning about horses, I like that.
Don McLeanI don't read young adult or children's books, now that my grandchildren are beyond the age of my reading to them. I read reviews, and so I'm aware of what's out there. But I tend not to read the books.
Lois LowryI read everything! I would have read the phone book if you put it in front of me. I just read.
Diana VreelandSometimes he would advise me to read poetry, and would send me in his letters quantities of verses and whole poems, which he wrote from memory. 'Read poetry,' he wrote: 'poetry makes men better.' How often, in my later life, I realized the truth of this remark of his! Read poetry: it makes men better.
Peter KropotkinI think that when you're depressed, you can't concentrate long enough and well enough to read for the most part; some people can, but by and large people - that's one of the first things that goes, is the capacity to read meaningful literature. With grief, that's not true. For a while you can't read, but then you really are amenable to solace.
Kay Redfield JamisonThe best advice I can give on this is, once it's done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before. If there are things you aren't satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that's revision.
Neil GaimanI really try to understand what people are saying and answer as honestly as I can. But sometimes it's like they try to tie you into knots. That's why I mostly steer clear of the popular press. I try not to read . . . Well, I never read gossip press. I just read books. And I never switch on the TV any more.
Daphne GuinnessI don't read a word that's written about me. I don't read my own interviews. I don't read reviews. I think it would drive me insane.
Sarah RuhlI don't necessarily read everything. I read what I need to read to inspire the book I'm trying to finish.
Erica JongIn one sense, reading is a great waste of time. In another sense, it is a great extension of time, a way for one person to live a thousand and one lives in a single lifespan, to watch the great impersonal universe at work again and again That is why I read: I want everything to be okay. Thatโs why I read when I was a lonely kid and thatโs why I read now that Iโm a scared adult.
Mary RuefleIn any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
Michael CrichtonI never read a single book as a child. I did not read as a child. I worked on the farm. I had books in the classroom, but that was it. I never read a single book outside of the classroom.
Story MusgraveI used to read every golf magazine front to back; I was addicted to Golf Channel, read Rotella, read every golf book.
Trent DilferWhen you publish a book, you do so in part to end the silence. All censorship is silence. I would never, as an author, feel right requiring a young person whose family would object to the book to read it. Just as I would never force that person to read it, I would ask those folks to not force others not to read it. To me, that is just good manners.
Stephen ChboskyI never know how to give advice to a writer because there's so much you could say, and it's hard to translate your own experience. But of course, I always try. The main thing that I usually end up saying is to read a lot. To read a great deal and to learn from that.
Sue Monk KiddI haven't read the 'Twilight' books. But it's everywhere so I feel like I know it. Edward, Bella, Jacob, etc. but... I haven't read them.
Max IronsPublishers have realized that, unlike the previous time period, American teenagers are both smarter and require more topical material than they had been giving them before that. For one thing, they'll read thicker books. Besides, has anybody looked at the news or read the newspapers recently?
Tamora PierceI've said to others that there were places I had forgotten about that were just so powerful. I've read the Gospels many times, but it's been a while since I've read through a whole book
Michael W. SmithThe test for me, when I read other people's scripts, is whether I feel like there's something about me that is the best person to tell this story. I have a pretty high bar for myself. There's a lot of scripts that I read and think, "Oh, this is great, but I think there are 50 other directors who could bring this to the cinema."
Francesca GregoriniIt distresses me that parents insist that their children read or make them read. I think the best way for children to treasure reading is for them to see the adults in their lives reading for their own pleasure.
Kate DiCamilloI read nonfiction almost exclusively - both for research and also for pleasure. When I read fiction, it's almost always in the thriller genre, and it needs to rivet me in the opening few chapters.
Dan BrownI find that with fantasy, you lose yourself in it a lot. It's great to be able to go into a dark theater or turn off the lights in your house and just get sucked into this world. I remember watching Star Wars when I was a little kid when they did the re-release of all the originals. I couldn't even read yet but my uncle took me and he would read me the opening as the words were coming up on the screen. I just remember being so sucked into that and thinking, "I want to be Luke Skywalker."
Austin ButlerYou read some good reviews and then you read a bad one, and the bad one pisses you off but there's nothing you can do. It's just an opinion.
Simon Taylor-DavisAll the old houses that I knew when I was a child were full of books, bought generation after generation by members of the family. Nobody told you to read this or not to read that.
Katherine Anne PorterWe all start out with the same alphabet. We are all unique. Talent is not the most important thing --- discipline and dedication are. Craft can be learned but desire and longing are innate. Despite the demands of school and just being young, try to write SOMETHING every day --- a description, a captured emotion, a simile, a metaphor. Read, for crying out loud! A writer must read the way a ball player must go to the ballfield every day to practice. Everything is possible in this world of ours--- and so's publication.
Robert CormierAnd it sort of jogged a memory of something that I read at school and I read it, and I thought God this is it. So you never can tell. I could find something this afternoon.
Andrew Lloyd WebberSo much of contemporary crime fiction is painful to read and obsessed with violence, particularly against women, and I can't read that.
Donna LeonI like a tranquil, even-keeled, self-controlled God. A God who doesn't fly off the handle at the least provocation. A God who lives one step above the fray. A God who has that British stiff upper lip even when disaster is looming. When I read my Bible, though, I keep running into a different God, and I'm not pleased. This God says he "hates" sin. Well, he usually yells it. Read the prophets. It's just one harangue after another, all in loud decibels. And when the shouting is over, then comes the pouting. ... When all else fails, he throws himself in front of the car.
Mark Galli