Famous Quotes & Sayings

Aldous Huxley

After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one's mind; one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.

Aldous Huxley

The proper study of mankind is books.

Alia Shawkat

I've been reading scripts where they've been doing a lot of singing now, but within the dark, realistic story line. I would love, love, love, love to do that. But not a musical on Broadway, I don't have that kind of energy or stamina.

Ali Larter

I love to cook. I spend weekends reading cookbooks-it's really my relaxation.

Amos Oz

The gift of literature is that, in some lucky cases, reading a novel or a story makes the reader more curious, more open-minded.

Ally Condie

Reading the situation correctly is part of getting through it safely.

Anne Tyler

Reading any piece of writing aloud is an acid test, particularly when it comes to dialogue. There were writers I'd always admired who suddenly rang false when I spoke their words in our living room.

Angela Davis

Our leaders were assassinated, one of the things I was reading today was - 28 Panthers were killed by the police but 300 Black Panthers were killed by other Panthers just within - internecine warfare. It just began to seem like we were in an impossible task given what we were facing.

Amy Hempel

Journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one. You are trained to get rid of anything nonessential. You go in, you start writing your article, assuming a person's going to stop reading the minute you give them a reason. So the trick is: don't give them one.

Amy Grant

I was taught a lot of Bible at home and had a voracious appetite for reading the Bible.

Anne Roiphe

I have always been fascinated by the human mind, conscious and unconscious - that is what writing and reading is about, too. The why of your life and the why of your choices and the what has happened that you know and the what that you don't know is really riveting, and psychoanalysts share my wonder at how it all unfolds.

Anita Borg

Drs. Margolis and Fisher have done a great service to education, computer science, and the culture at large. Unlocking the Clubhouse should be required reading for anyone and everyone who is concerned about the decreasing rate of women studying computer science.

Ambrose Bierce

PALMISTRY, n. The 947th method . . . of obtaining money by false pretences [by] "reading character" in the wrinkles [of] the hand. The pretence is not altogether false. . . for the wrinkles in every hand submitted plainly spell the word "dupe."

Anthony Kennedy

The court decided, based on its reading of our precedents, that the effects test of Lemon is violated whenever government action creates an identification of the state with a religion, or with religion in general, ...or when the effect of the governmental action is to endorse one religion over another, or to endorse religion in general.

Anthony Hopkins

I love to read, and so I've been reading everything I can, not intensely, but I love to read so I read "Origin of Species" by Darwin and I can't make head or tail of E=MC squared by Einstein, but I try to baffle my way through that.

Alice Walker

Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.

Alice James

What sense of superiority it gives one to escape reading some book which every one else is reading.

Alice Munro

I don't always, or even usually, read stories from beginning to end. I start anywhere and proceed in either direction. A story is not like a road to follow, it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while.

Alice Hoffman

That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or her imagination.

Alice Hoffman

Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow. When this happened, other people in the family couldn't bring themselves to disturb them. All that could be heard in the parlor was the sound of pages, turning.

Anne Michaels

Reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil.

Anne Lamott

Reading poetry and reading the great works of the canon that we were reading in the '60s and the '70s and '80s was mind altering.

Desmond Tutu

Instead of growing old gracefully, at home with my family - reading and writing and praying and thinking - too much of my time has been spent at airports and in hotels.

Debbie Reynolds

That's what a writer does; they make things up and that makes for good reading.

Dawn Ostroff

The days of waking up and reading the overnight ratings are over.

Anna Quindlen

I always have music on unless I'm reading aloud, which I always do before I hand anything in. It's the only way to know if a sentence really works, without clunks or cul-de-sac clauses.

Anna Quindlen

Reading is another thing that has made me more human by exposing me to worlds I might never have entered and people I might never meet.

Anna Quindlen

Let me say first that reading is my favorite pastime, bar none. If I couldn't read, I don't know what I'd do. But as a writer, it's both a blessing and a curse. You absorb technique as you go along.

Anna Quindlen

All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.

Anna Quindlen

the more humdrum aspects of life do not make for gripping reading. To render them compelling, a writer must describe the universal in eloquent and evocative prose. Alas, Frey's writing suggests that this was not an option, and he came up with something else.

Anna Quindlen

Uncontrollable consumerism has become a watchword of our culture despite regular and compelling calls for its end. The United States has more malls than high schools; Americans spend more time shopping than reading. ... Some of the most insightful writing about the American character over the nation's history has been about neither freedom nor democracy but about the crazed impulse to acquire things.

Anna Quindlen

A finished person is a boring person.

Angelina Grimke

I have not placed reading before praying because I regard it more important, but because, in order to pray aright, we must understand what we are praying for.