"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

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

"The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more."
— Patricia A. McKillip (The Bell at Sealey Head)

"The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"My candle burns at both ends. It will not last the night. But ah my foes and oh my friends it shares a lovely light."
— Roald Dahl

"A lie travels half-way around the world while the truth is still putting on its boots."
— Mark Twain

"A writer is a reader moved to emulation."
— Saul Bellow

"It has long been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf. On this shelf rests a small, mysterious completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection, reveals a good deal about its owner."
— Anne Fadiman (Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader)

"If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot be."
— Alberto Manguel (The Library at Night)

"The public wants work which flatters its illusions."
— Gustave Flaubert

"Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read."
— Alberto Manguel (The Library at Night)

"Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons."
— Alberto Manguel (A History of Reading)

"Books. They are lined up on shelves or stacked on a table. There they are wrapped up in there jackets, lines of neat print on nicely bound pages. They look like such orderly, static things. Then you, the reader come along. You open the book jacket, and it can be like opening the gates to an unknown city, or opening the lid of a treasure chest. You read the first word and you're off on a journy of exploration and discovery."
— David Almond

"I never minded the random scribblings of other readers, found them interesting in fact. It is a truth universally acknowledged that people write the darndest things in the margins of their books. "
— Tara Bray Smith

"Of all books printed, probably not more than half are ever read. Many are embalmed in public libraries; many go into private quarters to fill spaces; many are glanced at and put away...scarcely opened until the fire needs kindling. The most ardent book-lovers are not always the greatest readers; indeed, the rabid bibliomaniac seldom reads at all. To him books are as ducats to the miser, something to be hoarded and not employed... So pleasant it is to buy book; so tiresome to utilize them. "
— Flora Haines Apponyi Loughead

"Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small."
— Virginia Woolf (The Common Reader: First Series, Annotated Edition)

"The books and magazines streamed in. He could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. … they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality."
— Thomas Mann

"Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise."
— Philip Roth

"Most non-readers are nothing but an agglomeration of third-hand opinion and blindly received wisdom. "
— Tom Bissell

"Certain bookworms eat books. Eat them, swear in them, spill things on them."
— Tara Bray Smith

"Life … is a bit like reading. … If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what point is there to your reading? Only that it’s yours. Similarly, why live your life? Because it’s yours. But what if such an answer becomes less and less convincing?"
— Julian Barnes (Flaubert's Parrot)

"If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that."
— Julian Barnes (Flaubert's Parrot)

"Eternal Wish ISBN 9781905809660"
— Philip L Moore

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

"What I saw next stopped me dead in my tracks. Books. Not just one or two dozen, but hundreds of them. In crates. In piles on the floor. In bookcases that stretched from floor to ceiling and lined the entire room. I turned around and around in a slow circle, feeling as if I'd just stumbled into Ali Baba's cave. I was breathless, close to tears, and positively dizzy with greed."
— Jennifer Donnelly (A Northern Light)

"NEWSPAPER: What great paper is the Earth; what a typeface is the Day; what ink is the Night! – Everyone prints, everyone reads; no one understands."
— Xavier Forneret

"All these are readers, and their gestures, their craft, the pleasure, the responsibility and the power they derive from reading, are common with mine. I am not alone."
— Alberto Manguel (A History of Reading)

"Mom always taught me not to use the word hate. As if it were profanity."
— Tedd Arnold (Rat Life)

"I know that no reader ever asks a question. A writer must force his favors upon his readers."
— Jan Neruda (Prague Tales)

"We as authors sign a pact with our readers; they'll go on reading because they trust us to play fair with them and deliver what we've promised."
— Pamela Glass Kelly (From Inspiration to Publication: How to Succeed as a Children's Writer: Advice from 15 Award Winning Writers)