Quotes about reading

I can't pass a bookstore without slipping inside, looking for the next book that will burn my hand when I touch its jacket, or hand me over a promissory note of such immense power that it contains the formula that will change everything about me.

Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence. You touch them as they quiver with a divine pleasure. You read them and they fall asleep to happy dreams for the next ten years. If you do them the favor of understanding them, of taking in their portions of grief and wisdom, then they settle down in contented residence in your heart.

Here is all I ask of a book—give me everything. Everything, and don't leave out a single word.

Really, I don't know which is the true me. What ever will I do when there aren't any more books to read, or when I can't find another role model to imitate? Probably just wither away, helpless and sniveling profusely. Anyhow, these aimless thoughts I have on the train every day don't do me much good. The unpleasant warmth I still felt in my body was unbearable. I felt I had to do something, somehow, but would I be able to fully grasp what that was? My self-criticisms seem basically pointless to me. I would start to judge, and when I'd get to my negative or weak traits, I'd immediately begin to indulge or wallow in self-pity, and then decide it's no good, why not just leave well enough alone, so I've given up on criticism. It would be best if I just didn't think of anything at all.

"I think it is very good that she has learned to read," I said. "It is her own freedom." (chapter 17 p118)

“How did you…pass the time?” Sunday asked. “You couldn’t just ching out of it, could you?”

“We had a different form of chinging,” Eunice said. “An earlier type of virtual-reality technology, much more robust and completely unaffected by time lag. You may have heard of it. We called it ‘reading.’”

He liked slim books which he could slip into his overcoat pocket and leave there unread for months. What was the point of a book if you couldn’t carry it around with you as a theoretical defence against boredom?

'''It is often said that one has but one life to live, but that is nonsense. For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.

'An exile is a refugee with a library!'

When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.

“I’m your apprentice!” Simon protested. “When are you going to teach me something?”

“Idiot boy! What do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to teach you to read and to write. That’s the most important thing. What do you want to learn?”

“Magic!” Simon said immediately. Morgenes stared at him.

“And what about reading...?” the doctor asked ominously.

Simon was cross. As usual, people seemed determined to balk him at every turn. “I don’t know,” he said. What’s so important about reading and letters, anyway? Books are just stories about things. Why should I want to read books?”

Morgenes grinned, an old stoat finding a hole in the henyard fence. “Ah, boy, how can I be mad at you...what a wonderful, charming, perfectly stupid thing to say!” The doctor chuckled appreciatively, deep in his throat.

“What do you mean?” Simon’s eyebrows moved together as he frowned. “Why is it wonderful and stupid?”

“Wonderful because I have such a wonderful answer,” Morgenes laughed. Stupid because...because young people are made stupid, I suppose—as tortoises are made with shells, and wasps with stings—it is their protection against life’s unkindnesses.”

“Begging your pardon?” Simon was totally flummoxed now.

“Books,” Morgenes said grandly, leaning back on his precarious stool, “—books are magic. That is the simple answer. And books are traps as well.”

“Magic? Traps?”

“Books are a form of magic—” the doctor lifted the volume he had just laid on the stack, “—because they span time and distance more surely than any spell or charm. What did so-and-so think about such-and-such two hundred years agone? Can you fly back through the ages and ask him? No—or at least, probably not.

But, ah! If he wrote down his thoughts, if somewhere there exists a scroll, or a book of his logical discourses...he speaks to you! Across centuries! And if you wish to visit far Nascadu or lost Khandia, you have also but to open a book....”

“Yes, yes, I suppose I understand all that.” Simon did not try to hide his disappointment. This was not what he had meant by the word “magic.” “What about traps, then? Why ‘traps’?”

Morgenes leaned forward, waggling the leather-bound volume under Simon’s nose. “A piece of writing is a trap,” he said cheerily, “and the best kind. A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive—which is knowledge—alive forever. The more books you have,” the doctor waved an all-encompassing hand about the room, “the more traps, then the better chance of capturing some particular, elusive, shining beast—one that might otherwise die unseen.”

What was the use of writing if someone didn't read what you have to say?