50 Inspirational Quotes About Reading That Will Ignite Your Passion

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

- Anna Quindlen

"Today a reader, tomorrow a leader."

- Margaret Fuller

"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

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

- Napoleon Bonaparte

"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

"Books are a uniquely portable magic."

- Stephen King

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

- Anne Lamott

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

- Jeanette Winterson

"We read to know we are not alone."

- C.S. Lewis

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

- Frederick Douglass

"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

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

- Cicero

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

- Jhumpa Lahiri

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

- Malorie Blackman

"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

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

- James Baldwin

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

- Barack Obama

"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

"Books may well be the only true magic."

- Alice Hoffman

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

- W. Somerset Maugham

"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

"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

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

- Cassandra Clare

"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

"You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free."

- Paul Rand

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."

- Jane Austen

"What I love most about reading: It gives you the ability to reach higher ground. And keep climbing."

- Oprah

"Books are a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind."

- Toni Morrison

"I have challenged myself that I will read thousands of books and I will empower myself with knowledge. Pens and books are the weapons that defeat terrorism."

- Malala Yousafzai

"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."

- Richard Steele

"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

"One of the many gifts that books give readers is a connection to each other. When we share an affection for a writer, an author or a story, we also have a better understanding of people unlike ourselves. Books cultivate empathy."

- Sarah Jessica Parker

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened, and after you are finished reading one, you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was."

- Ernest Hemingway

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

- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

"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

"Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him."

- Maya Angelou

"Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers."

- Harry S. Truman

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

- Dr. Seuss

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

- Barack Obama

"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

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

- Dr. Seuss

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

- Jacqueline Kennedy

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

- Walt Disney

"A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time—proof that humans can work magic."

- Carl Sagan

"A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever."

- Louis L'Amour

"Reading is important, because if you can read, you can learn anything about everything and everything about anything."

- Tomie dePaola

"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves."

- Anna Quindlen

"Wear the old coat and buy the new book."

- Austin Phelps

"I will defend the importance of bedtime stories to my last gasp."

- J.K. Rowling

"It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish."

- S.I. Hayakawa

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

- Jorge Luis Borges

"To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries."

- A.C. Grayling

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."

- Ray Bradbury

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."

- Benjamin Franklin

"The whole world opened up to me when I learned to read."

- Mary McLeod Bethune

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

- Kate DiCamillo

"A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest."

- C.S. Lewis

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

- Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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

- J.K. Rowling

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

- Benedict Cumberbatch

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

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books."

- Roald Dahl

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live."

- Joan Didion

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

- Nick Hornby

"Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it."

- P.J. O'Rourke

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

- Ursula K. Le Guin

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

- Susan Sontag

"Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them."

- Judy Blume

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

- Laurie Anderson

"I wouldn't be a songwriter if 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

"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

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

- René Descartes

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

- George Saunders

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

- William Styron

"I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves."

- David Foster Wallace

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

- Jean Rhys

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

- Robert Louis Stevenson

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

- Philip Pullman

"The greatest gift is a passion for reading."

- Elizabeth Hardwick

"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

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

- Khaled Hosseini

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

- Catherynne M. Valente

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

- Louisa May Alcott

"Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting."

- Edmund Burke

"The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest (people) of the past centuries."

- René Descartes

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

- Dave Eggers

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

- George Orwell

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

- Franz Kafka

"There is a wonder in reading Braille that the sighted will never know: to touch words and have them touch you back."

- Jim Fiebig

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

- Helen Exley

"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

"It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours."

- William Ellery Channing

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

- Jim Rohn

"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 house without books is like a room without windows."

- Heinrich Mann

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

- Garrison Keillor

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

- Louis L'Amour

"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

"and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real."

- Nora Ephron

"It is books that are the key to the wide world; if you can’t do anything else, read all that you can."

- Jane Hamilton

"There is no friend as loyal as a book."

- Ernest Hemingway

"A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read."

- Mark Twain

"If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I’ve always thought that a good book should be either the entry point inward, to learn about yourself, or a door outward, to open you up to new worlds."

- Taylor Jenkins Reid

"I'm reading so much and exposing myself to so many new ideas. It almost feels like the chemistry and the structure of my brain is changing so rapidly sometimes."

- Emma Watson

"Comics are a gateway drug to literacy."

- Art Spiegelman

"He that loves reading has everything within his reach."

- William Godwin

"Let us read and let us dance—two amusements that will never do any harm to the world."

- Voltaire

"Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere."

- Mary Schmich

"Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are."

- Mason Cooley

"Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled “This could change your life.”"

- Helen Exley

"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

"Reading for me is spending time with a friend."

- Gary Paulsen

"Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier."

- Kathleen Norris

"Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours."

- John Locke

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

- Margaret Atwood

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

- Francis Bacon

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

- Naomi Shihab Nye

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

- Elbert Hubbard

"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

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

- Charles Baudelaire

"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

"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

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

- Emma Thompson

"The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- François Mauriac

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

- Tony Abbott

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

- Fran Lebowitz

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

- Henry Miller

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

- Sharon Creech

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

- Cornelia Funke

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

- David Sedaris

"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

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

- Lena Dunham

"It wasn't until I started reading and found books they wouldn't let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else."

- John Waters

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

- Haruki Murakami

"Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time."

- E.P. Whipple

"Reading is the special key to take you where you want to be."

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

"A book is valuable chiefly for its power to inspire."

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

"If you don’t read you perish. If you read you control those that don’t read."

"Everyone is a reader, some just haven’t found their favourite book yet."

"Reading is your first step to travel the world!"

"The beauty of life is to read a book and to share that treasure with others."