Reading is a skill as well as a privilege. We are all lucky to live in parts of the world in which education and information is available for anyone who wants it. And yet, it’s probably fair to say we take reading for granted. It’s not malicious or spoiled on our parts, but it’s such an accessible part of our society that it’s hard not to forget how special it is sometimes. But there are those to whom reading has changed their life in very obvious ways. Some of the most celebrated authors in history have spoken about the joys, the benefits and the necessities of reading. To hear from people who have made a living off the written word show such reverence for the medium is heartening. Have a look at what just a few of the great literary minds had to say about the joy of reading.
- “The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.” – Margaret Atwood
- “Books smell good. They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket.” — Ray Bradbury
- “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” — Henry David Thoreau
- “We read to know that we are not alone.” —S. Lewis
- “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
- “It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” — Oscar Wilde
- “My alma mater was books, a good library…. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.” — Malcolm X
- “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you’d most like not to lose.” — Neil Gaiman
- “Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” — Mark Twain
- “To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” — Victor Hugo
- “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” — Stephen King
- “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” — James Baldwin
- “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” — George R. R. Martin
- “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” – Harper Lee
- “When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.” — Virginia Woolf
- “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” – Toni Morrison
- “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” — Ernest Hemingway
- “Be awesome! Be a book nut!” — Dr. Seuss