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Read. Read. Read. Read. Read great books. Read poetry, history, biography. Read the novels that have stood the test of time. And read closely.
David McCulloughWhen I forget the power of the word, I read Frederick Buechner. When I forget the deep relief of telling the truth, I read Frederick Buechner. When I forget to look for the holiness all around me, I read Frederick Buechner. When I forget why the gospel matters, I read Frederick Buechner.
Barbara Brown TaylorI read a book twice as fast as anybody else. First, I read the beginning, and then I read the ending, and then I start in the middle and read toward whatever end I like best.
Gracie AllenI like to read biographies of authors that I love, like Richard Yates. I also like to see what non-fiction authors are out there. My bible is Something Happened. It's one of the greatest books I've ever read. But if I don't read a Dostoevsky soon I'm going to kill myself.
Richard LewisA truly good book attracts very little favor to itself. It is so true that it teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down and commence living on its hint. When I read an indifferent book, it seems the best thing I can do, but the inspiring volume hardly leaves me leisure to finish its latter pages. It is slipping out of my fingers while I read. It creates no atmosphere in which it may be perused, but one in which its teachings may be practiced. It confers on me such wealth that I lay it down with regret. What I began by reading I must finish by acting.
Henry David ThoreauI just stopped reading a lot of books. I mean, I read books that I have to read for school, but I don't actually pick up a book and read for fun. On my time off, I go to movies, hang out with friends, go shopping...just little things.
Mark IndelicatoIt's not often that I read about actors that I'm going to be meeting. I get to read articles about actors who were going to come in, so I get to see someone and say, "Oh, I read that I was going to see you. It's very nice to see you."
J. J. AbramsRead for fun, read for information, read in order to understand yourself and other people with quite different ideas. Learn about the world beyond your door. Learn to be compassionate and grow in wisdom. Books can help us in all these ways.
Katherine PatersonWhatever you read, read the Bible first. Beware of bad books: there are plenty in this day. Take heed what you read.
J. C. RyleI just read everything I could get my hands on. I taught myself to read or my mother taught me. Who knows how I learned to read? It was before I went to school, so I would go to the library and just take things off the shelf. My mother had to sign a piece of paper saying I could take adult books.
Joan Didion[I was advised] to read Jordan's 'Cours d'analyse'; and I shall never forget the astonishment with which I read that remarkable work, the first inspiration for so many mathematicians of my generation, and learnt for the first time as I read it what mathematics really meant.
G. H. HardyAnd then he left, and came back, and our lives fell apart, like a well-loved book that youโd read and read again, until one night you picked it up to read yourself to sleep and the binding collapsed, sending dozens of pages spiraling toward the floor.
Jennifer WeinerI do have some theatrical background. I've written plays and seen plays and read plays. But I also read novels. One thing I don't read is screenplays.
Charlie KaufmanI 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 JamisonShades of Grey. I haven't read it yet, but what you have to read carefully, is โStory of Oโ by the French writer Dominique Aury. This is actually the forerunner of all the whole SM novels and it's really good. You have to read it.
Theo HutchcraftIf it is not strong upon your heart to practice what you read, to what end do you read? To increase your own condemnation? If your light and knowledge be not turned into practice, the more knowing a man you are, the more miserable a man you will be in the day of recompense; your light and knowledge will more torment you than all the devils in hell. Your knowledge will be that rod that will eternally lash you, and that scorpion that will forever bite you, and that worm that will everlastingly gnaw you; therefore read, and labor to know that you may do--or else you are undone forever.
Thomas BrooksTo read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will tax the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
Henry David ThoreauBush has not read enough books to have a developed moral sense. The fewer books you read, the easier it is to become fundamental. In some ways my antiwar stand here is also a stand on anti-literacy. Someone should get G.W. into a reading program, get him to join a book club. Have him read Hamlet, King Lear.
Sherman AlexieI never had a plan, except to write. I love what I do, and have from the beginning. Loving what you do makes it a lot easier to work, every day, to face the tough spots and heel in for the long haul. Nothing against plans; they work for some people. But for me, if I'd been planning, worrying about numbers, trying to micro-manage my career, I wouldn't have focused on the writing. If you don't write, you're not read. If you're not read, you don't sell. So that's my Master Plan, I guess. Write the books, let the agent agent, the editor edit, the publisher publish.
Nora RobertsSometimes people read a book in order to not go on a trip. You read a book instead of going on the trip. And so the travel writer is doing the traveling for you.
Paul TherouxIf you go to a therapist, they say, 'Are you sure? How do you feel about your wrinkles?' And I say, 'I don't know, because I don't really see them.' I see my hands, but I don't see my face, so it's not a torment. I only see it for five minutes in the morning when I brush my teeth! When you read women's magazines you always read about this drama of getting old, about anti-aging cream and plastic surgery and whatever else. But I think if you're independent, like I have grown to be, it's welcome.
Isabella RosselliniI remember once, I read in a horoscope, because I'm an Aries, I read this terrible thing, which really affected me, which said, "You will never be original. You will always be an interpreter." (Laughs) I thought, "Oh my God." You know, I had to live with that on my back for [all my life].
Andy SerkisPublishers 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 PierceAs a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read.
Mark HaddonI'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. SmithYou have to resign yourself to the fact that you waste a lot of trees before you write anything you really like, and that's just the way it is. It's like learning an instrument, you've got to be prepared for hitting wrong notes occasionally, or quite a lot, cause I wrote an awful lot before I wrote anything I was really happy with. And read a lot. Reading really helps. Read anything you can get your hands on.
J. K. RowlingThere is a logic [to my reading], but I can't define it. I like reading impulsively. I collect books, I have a lot of them, but most of them I have not read yet. I'll read them when they call me from the shelf.
Aleksandar HemonI don't read as much as I'd like. I've been writing a lot. I've been doing a lot of music, but I don't read as much as I should. I just don't.
Kevin CostnerI 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 BrownWhile I read almost all my newspapers online, I'm not a big fan of e-books because I like to see what I've read and remember it. Books are a way of making memory physical.
Paul LynchJohn Cassavetes wrote A Woman Under the Influence as a play. He said, "Hey, I wrote you a play." And I said, "Great, let's read it." I read it and I said, "John, I couldn't do this every night and twice on Wednesday and Saturday".
Gena RowlandsOften if you are very, very close with someone, sometimes it does not read. In effect, your dynamic onstage is defused. You share too much onstage. There's sort of a blurring of behavior that doesn't read to the audience as chemistry.
Jessica HechtI've written a book that hopefully will give people a sense of what [presidency] was like. I hope my friends read it and say, "Now I understand." I hope my detractors read it and say, "Well, I better understand."
George W. BushIf you cannot read all your books...fondle them---peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.
Winston ChurchillWe read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.
Francis BaconI read when I get up in the morning, when I can during the day and every single evening. Most of my weekends are spent reading great books. Books are my constant companions. If you eat three times a day you'll be fed. But if you read three times a day you'll be wise.
Shimon PeresIt's not important - it's not necessary that you read everything. What is necessary is that you care about things that you read and that you find something that really matters to you and you try and make something like that.
Edward HirschEverybody who has ever read Sandman knows exactly what the Sandman looks like, which is more than anybody who has ever read The Catcher in the Rye can say about Holden Caufield.
Neil GaimanAll 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 PorterMy books have been published all over Europe. They read me there, and I want to read them back. I also spend a lot of time in Europe, often meeting writers, and I'm sick of apologizing for the embarrassing shortage of translations in America.
Aleksandar HemonSo 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 GalliThe moment your kid's born you realize no one knows anything. No one goes to classes. You just have a kid. You can read all the books you like, but unfortunately none of our kids have read the books so they don't care. You're basically making it up as you go along.
Hugh JackmanHassan couldn't read a first-grade textbook but he'd read me plenty. That was a little unsettling but also sort of comfortable to have someone who always knew what you needed.
Khaled HosseiniThe ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, colour-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I have read.
Anthony BurgessIsn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said..."As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar.
Cornelia FunkeMy youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, โIf I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read โฆโ And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out โwhat happens nextโ โฆ the feeling that keeps you up half the night. The feeling that comes before the plotโs been learned.
Guy Gavriel Kay