Inspiring Quotes for Readers: A Collection to Ignite Your Passion

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go."

- Dr. Seuss

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one."

- George R.R. Martin

"I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young."

- Maya Angelou

"My alma mater was books, a good library…. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity."

- Malcolm X

"Let us remember: one book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world."

- Malala Yousafzai

"Reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible."

- Barack Obama

"So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away. And in its place you can install, a lovely bookshelf on the wall."

- Roald Dahl

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies... The man who never reads lives only one."

- George R.R. Martin

"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

"The man who does not read good books is no better than the man who can't."

- Mark Twain

"Today a reader, tomorrow a leader."

- Margaret Fuller

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

- Neil Gaiman

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one..."

- George R.R. Martin

"Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: They feed the soul."

- Anne Lamott

"Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all."

- Philip Pullman

"One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time."

- Carl Sagan

"Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home."

- Anna Quindlen

"We read to know we are not alone."

- C.S. Lewis

"Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world."

- Napoleon Bonaparte

"Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or a duty. It should be offered as a gift."

- Kate DiCamillo

"Children are made readers on the laps of their parents."

- Emilie Buchwald

"There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all."

- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

"The world was hers for the reading."

- Betty Smith

"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."

- Frederick Douglass

"I have lived a thousand lives and I’ve loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read."

- George R.R. Martin

"Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings."

- Ann Patchett

"I read a book one day and my whole life was changed."

- Orhan Pamuk

"There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away."

- Emily Dickinson

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

- René Descartes

"Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself."

- George Bernard Shaw

"I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage."

- Roald Dahl

"When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young."

- Maya Angelou

"A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading."

- William Styron

"I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else."

- Neil Gaiman

"Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere."

- Jean Rhys

"The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives."

- Roald Dahl

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read."

- James Baldwin

"Books are a uniquely portable magic."

- Stephen King

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

- Harper Lee

"That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words!"

- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 1943

"I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

"it wasn't for books that I loved as a kid. I think that when you can escape into a book it trains your imagination to think big and to think that more can exist than what you see."

- Taylor Swift

"To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life."

- W. Somerset Maugham

"Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary."

- Jim Rohn

"The things I want to know are in books. My best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I [haven’t] read."

- Abraham Lincoln

"If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book."

- J.K. Rowling

"Some books leave us free and some books make us free."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world."

- Jeanette Winterson

"As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation."

- Ursula K. Le Guin

"Literature is the safe and traditional vehicle through which we learn about the world and pass on values from one generation to the next. Books save lives."

- Laurie Anderson

"Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while."

- Malorie Blackman

"I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader... imaginative access to other selves."

- David Foster Wallace

"Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read. Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life."

- Roxane Gay

"Reading is important. If you know how to read, then the whole world opens up to you."

- Barack Obama

"Books may well be the only true magic."

- Alice Hoffman

"Some books are so familiar that reading them is like being home again."

- Louisa May Alcott

"A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe."

- Madeleine L'Engle

"Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it."

- Paul Auster

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something–a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things–which you had thought special and particular to you."

- Alan Bennett

"The story is truly finished–and meaning is made–not when the author adds the last period, but when the reader enters."

- Celeste Ng

"A book is a gift you can open again and again."

- Garrison Keillor

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers."

- Charles W. Eliot

"The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us."

- Ray Bradbury

"A child who carries a book with a bookmark in it is in two places at the same time."

- Tony Abbott

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."

- C.S. Lewis

"So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install a lovely bookshelf on the wall."

- Roald Dahl

"The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn’t know how to read."

- Benjamin Franklin

"We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read."

- Jules Verne

"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all."

- Abraham Lincoln

"The man who does not read good books is no better than the man who can’t."

- Mark Twain

"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading."

- Logan Pearsall Smith

"A good book is an event in my life."

- Stendhal

"Reading brings us unknown friends."

- Honore de Balzac

"Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you."

- Louis L'Amour

"Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book."

- Bill Watterson

"Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries."

- Anne Herbert

"Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book."

- E.B. White

"You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend."

- Paul Sweeney

"You may have tangible wealth untold. Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be — I had a mother who read to me."

- Strickland Gillian

"Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back."

- John Green

"I cannot live without books."

- Thomas Jefferson

"Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this."

- Dave Eggers

"Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear."

- Judy Blume

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

- Jorge Luis Borges

"What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person ..."

- Carl Sagan

"I feel the need of reading. It is a loss to a man not to have grown up among books."

- Abraham Lincoln

"When I say to a parent, “read to a child,” I don't want it to sound like medicine. I want it to sound like chocolate."

- Mem Fox

"Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window."

- William Faulkner

"Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them."

- Kate DiCamillo

"No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond."

- C.S. Lewis

"In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you."

- Mortimer J. Adler

"There is no substitute for books in the life of a child."

- May Ellen Chase

"A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom."

- Robert Frost

"The great thing about reading is that it broadens your life."

- George R.R. Martin

"Sleep is good, and books are better."

- George R.R. Martin

"Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with them is to engage with oneself, and the lasting rewards are not confined to specific career paths."

- Jonathan Stroud

"A book, too, can be a star, 'explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,' a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe."

- Madeleine L'Engle

"Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one."

- Terry Pratchett

"There is no frigate like a book, to take us lands away."

- Emily Dickinson

"Read, because that’s the way you learn how the language works. That’s the way you learn about emotion, on paper. That’s how you find out how stories are fastened, by reading and reading and reading."

- Yolen

"Both reading and writing are experiences – lifelong – in the course of which we who encounter words used in certain ways are persuaded by them to be brought mind and heart within the presence, the power, of the imagination."

- Eudora Welty

"We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: We need books, time, and silence."

- Philip Pullman

"Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift."

- Kate DiCamillo

"One must always be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us."

- Cassandra Clare

"Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know."

- Alberto Manguel

"A word after a word after a word is power."

- Margaret Atwood

"It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words."

- Naomi Shihab Nye

"Once you've read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you."

- Louis L'Amour

"There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books."

- Irving Stone

"That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book."

- Mary Ann Shaffer

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."

- Cicero

"It is known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else."

- Catherynne M. Valente

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live."

- Joan Didion

"Writing is thinking on paper."

- William Zinsser

"That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet."

- Jhumpa Lahiri

"Books are mirrors: You only see in them what you already have inside you."

- Carlos Ruiz Zafón

"Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we’re someone else."

- George Saunders

"Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let's not forget this."

- Dave Eggers

"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island."

- Walt Disney

"Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up."

- Nora Ephron

"A story can always break into pieces while it sits inside a book on a shelf; and, decades after we have read it even twenty times, it can open us up, by cut or caress, to a new truth."

- Andre Dubus

"I can feel infinitely alive curled up on the sofa reading a book."

- Benedict Cumberbatch

"Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labelled 'This could change your life.'"

- Helen Exley

"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book."

- Groucho Marx

"Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book."

- John Green

"There are some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things."

- Jeffrey Eugenides

"A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors."

- Charles Baudelaire

"Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life."

- Fernando Pessoa

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

- Mark Twain

"Read a lot. Expect something big, something exalting or deepening from a book."

- Susan Sontag

"When you catch an adjective, kill it. No I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them — then the rest will be valuable."

- Oscar Wilde

"Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly."

- Francis Bacon

"Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one's own self."

- Franz Kafka

"The brain is like a muscle, and if you don't exercise it by reading and doing creative stuff, it'll get weak and mushy."

- Jeff Kinney

"Reading only one book is like eating only one potato chip."

- Diane Duane

"A good book should take you out of yourself and then stuff you back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit."

- David Sedaris

"Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree?"

- Christopher Paolini

"If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads."

- François Mauriac

"A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation."

- Henry Miller

"Give weather reports. It helps the reality of a scene if foghorns are blowing or kites are in the sky on a windy afternoon or the day’s so hot wallpaper is peeling off the walls."

- Sid Fleischman

"Classic’ – a book which people praise and don’t read."

- Mark Twain

"I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them."

- Emma Thompson

"Ideas are the cheapest part of the writing. They are free! The hard part is what you do with the ideas you have gathered."

- Jane Yolen

"I love the way that each book — any book — is its own journey. You open it, and off you go…"

- Sharon Creech

"The first draft is a skeleton .… just bare bones. The rest of the story comes later with revising."

- Mark Twain

"Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage."

- Frances Hodgson Burnett

"I guess there are never enough books."

- John Steinbeck

"If you want to write, you should pay attention to people — everybody has a story — and listen to people when they talk."

- Judy Blume

"I don't read a book; I hold a conversation with the author."

- Elbert Hubbard

"Books are, let's face it, better than everything else."

- Nick Hornby

"Have books ‘happened’ to you? Unless your answer to that question is ‘yes,’ I’m unsure how to talk to you."

- Haruki Murakami

"Think before you speak. Read before you think."

- Fran Lebowitz

"Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work."

- Khaled Hosseini

"I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book."

- Coolio

"The best books... are those that tell you what you know already."

- George Orwell

"Let’s be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading."

- Lena Dunham

"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

- Groucho Marx

"A book is like a garden, carried in the pocket."

- Proverb, unknown origin

"Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?"

- Cornelia Funke

"Reading is not optional."

"Books break your heart and then put it back together again, but better than it was before."

"Don’t give up reading, the more you practice, the easier it will get."