Reading Quotations | Page 6

The importance and influence of books on me has been cumulative: the result of hearing and reading lots of stories about interesting people and places.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

The really good stand up comedians can be angry but relatable, and they have interestingly humanizing personalities. Their observational skills are far greater than mine, so I'll just stick to reading lines off a page.

I was reading Omar Khayyam, Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, L. Ron Hubbard, all sorts of philosophy. Bebop cats are like that. Curious. I wanted to know about everything.

A couple years ago, the novelist Russell Banks told me he was reading the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. I asked why. He said, 'Because I've always wanted to and am tired of having my reading assigned.' I thought it was a marvelous declaration of independence.

After all my years of playing soldiers, and then of reading History, I have almost a mania to be in the East, to see fighting, and to serve.

I love reading. I'm very much into history, novels, biographies and I have a wide range of thrillers.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

No matter how much time you spend reading books or following your intuition, you're gonna screw it up. Fifty times. You can't do parenting right.

With twins, reading aloud to them was the only chance I could get to sit down. I read them picture books until they were reading on their own.

I've done a number of readings at poetry lounges in Vancouver and Los Angeles. I've compiled a book of poetry that's completed, and two others I'm working on.

I love the feeling I get when I'm on a set; I love reading the scripts, playing the characters, getting to be someone else.

Reading cookbooks will help with just about anything in your life, including heartbreak.

An American of the present day reading his Sunday newspaper in a state of lazy collapse is one of the most perfect symbols of the triumph of quantity over quality that the world has yet seen.

English should be our official language. Reading and speaking English are requirements to become a citizen.

If, for example, all the codons are triplets, then in addition to the correct reading of the message, there are two incorrect readings which we shall obtain if we do not start the grouping into sets of three at the right place.

Now that I'm taking some time off from school, I've been reading a lot to make sure I don't forget everything. It's mostly classics and nonfiction accounts from actors, directors and writers from the '40s and '50s

I do most of my reading on the train ride to and from work. But I always have a book in my handbag so that I can read at any time, anywhere.

We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions.

Reading the Gospels, without the personality of Jesus, is like watching television with the sound turned off,

In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.

People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.

A newspaper that you're not reading can be used for anything; and the same people didn't think it was immoral to wrap their garbage in newspaper.

If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.

One of my favorite authors is Robert Cormier. He was a devout Catholic and a very nice man, which might not be the impression you get from reading his books.

What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.

But today we become aware of other readings of the human experience very quickly because of the media and the speed with which people travel the planet.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

It's not even my job to educate, but what I do is try to facilitate by creating a book that works on different levels. I do want to entertain and bring some joy to the reading experience. If it holds a little kernel of knowledge that readers choose to explore, well, that's great.

But with comics you're reading and assimilating an image simultaneously, instead of just reading or watching the tube

I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday.

My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.

You cannot get PTSD from reading a book or from hearing a story, even repeated stories over and over.

People really want to think that these things really happened. I don't know why that is important, but I know that when I finish reading a novel or something, I want to know how much of that really happened to this author.

Reading is like the sex act - done privately, and often in bed

We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure.

Whatever our bedtime was as kids, we could stay up an extra half hour if we were reading. My parents didn't care as long as I was under the spell of a Stephen King or a Douglas Adams. Now I read in bed. I read at work. I read standing in line. It's like, 'Hello, my name is Nathan and I am a reader.'

Just as you wouldn't leave the house without taking a shower, you shouldn't start the day without at least 10 minutes of sacred practice: prayer, meditation, inspirational reading.

My head was always bubbling over with facts and it seems to me this had little to do with my paying close attention in school and more to do with my voracious and omnivorous reading habits.

But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it.

We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.

I was reading a book... 'the history of glue' - I couldn't put it down.

I keep a quotes journal - of every sentence that I've wanted to remember from my reading of the past 30 years.

I just enjoy lying on the couch and reading a magazine.

I like the storytelling and reading the letters, the long-distance dedications.

A novelist writes a novel, and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and personal response, the communal nature of the audience is like having five hundred people read your novel and respond to it at the same time. I find that thrilling.

And you can't make a mistake when you are reading the Torah, so you have men standing around who will correct you if you are reading it incorrectly.

I will always respect the beliefs of fellow Christians who aren't comfortable reading or writing explicit love scenes, but I believe romances are beautiful and spiritual books that celebrate the best of what love has to offer and mirror the love God has for his children.

We had been reading about these beatniks who hung out or lived in Greenwich Village, and we wanted to find out what a 'beatnik' was, and so a friend and I went right to the source. What we learned, of course, was that beatniks were mostly artists.

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

I think the reason I don't read is because, when I'm reading, I feel like I'm missing out on something else. You know, What are my friends doing? Where's my girlfriend?

I tend to write first drafts that are incredibly cognitive, very rational, very boring. They come off as justification. Like, 'This is my idea and here's all the reasons that it's right.' It doesn't make for very compelling reading.

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.

Choose an author as you choose a friend.

A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.

I like cups of tea and reading books and poetry and old people things.

I was always told that I was good in mathematics, and I guess my grades and standardized test scores supported that. My worst subjects were those that generally involved a lot of reading - English and history. So, having good test scores in math and mediocre ones in reading, I was naturally advised to major in engineering in college.

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

A lot of my time is spent watching films and reading scripts. And it can be all-consuming. And it's obviously something I'm fortunate that is both my work and my hobby. It's what I would naturally be doing anyway.

Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.

A lot of what the 'Culture' is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens.

I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.

When it comes to the point where you occasionally look forward to being in prison on the basis that you might be able to spend a day reading a book, the realization dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would like.

I think people enjoy reading about money, but the people who are in charge of giving me guidance tell me not to talk about it in interviews. Why not? That's what everybody thinks about.

I just happen to like the work. I like preparing for a role. I like reading. I like analyzing. I like literature. I like emotions. I like working with other actors.

Education was the most important value in our home when I was growing up. People don't always realize that my parents shared a sense of intellectual curiosity and a love of reading and of history.

I'm a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.

I used to live a very social life and never spend much solitary time looking at birds or reading.

I'm often reading a magazine and hearing about someone's new record, and I think : "Oh, boy, that's gonna be better than me". It's a very common thing.

My free time at home is usually spent emailing, listening to music, reading and talking on the phone. I wish I was on the phone less, but I have been fortunate to stay in touch with so many incredible friends.

Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.

Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.

Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written.

A few years after my first son was born, he wanted to know how we chose his name, so I began reading him the story of Noah's Ark.

In terms of the idea of long-term occupation - I have been reading a little bit more about this period - and you can see in that occupation are many lessons for the current occupation of Iraq. So we have these connections that go way back that people aren't aware of.

I grew up reading genre writers, and to the degree that Eric Ambler and Graham Greene are genre writers, I'm a genre writer.

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how.

I'm not a big fan of table reads or sitting around a table and reading a script. I'd rather do it on set and do it for real.

Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan's 'Atonement,' I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them.

I never read Playboy before I started working there and stopped reading it the day I quit.

Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.

Shakespeare fascinated me. He hardly ever left the country. His imagination was worldwide though reading.

Oprah's got good politics, she's got a good heart, and she'll have us all up Jazzercising at six in the morning. This cannot be a bad thing, and reading a book while we're Jazzercising. So America would be better off if Oprah were president.

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

In order to have a charismatic leader, you have to have a charismatic program. Because if you have a charismatic program, then if you can read you can lead. When the leader gets killed while you're reading from page 13 of your charismatic program, you can bury the man with honors, then continue the plan by reading from page 14. Let's keep on.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.

To describe my scarce leisure time in today's terms, I always default to reading.

After I left the convent, for 15 years I was worn out with religion, I wanted nothing whatever to do with it. I felt disgusted with it. If I saw someone reading a religious book on a train, I'd think, how awful.

I've found that when the market's going down and you buy funds wisely, at some point in the future you will be happy. You won't get there by reading 'Now is the time to buy.'

Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.

The reason Saul Bellow doesn't talk to me anymore is because he knows his new novels are not worth reading.

I'm reading a book about Romaine Brooks, a wonderful painter from early in the last century.

There are a couple of carp fishing books I've been reading. I'm very interested in that line of books, because I think they write very well, carp anglers, about the general environment.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.

For someone who loves literature, and all books on principle, being asked to name three titles over a half century of serious reading is akin to asking one to recall their three favorite sunsets.

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

You can learn more about human nature by reading the Bible than by living in New York.

From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not.

I'm not altogether certain that a fundamentalism of necessity has to argue that it is the only reading of the human experience in order to stay alive.