Why I Read - Best Explained in Quotes

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.” – George R.R. Martin

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” – Ray Bradbury

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” – Fran Lebowitz

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” – Stephen King

“Reading brings us unknown friends” – Honoré de Balzac

“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.” – Ezra Pound

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” – Frederick Douglas

“A book is a gift you can open again and again.” – Garrison Keillor

“Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks.” – Dr. Seuss

“I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” – Jorge Luis Borges

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” – W. Somerset Maugham

“Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.” – Voltaire

“Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

“I couldn’t live a week without a private library – indeed, I’d part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I’d let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.” – H.P. Lovecraft

“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” – Groucho Marx

“Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.” – Albert Einstein

“Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.” – Henry Ward Beecher

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” – Joseph Brodsky

“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

“Reading for me, is spending time with a friend.” – Gary Paulsen

“What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright.” – Gustave Flaubert

“What kind of life can you have in a house without books?” – Sherman Alexie

“Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.” – Holbrook Jackson