Notable Quotables: For the Love of Reading


By Paulette Beete and Carolyn Coons

As avid readers, just the glimpse of a bookstore or library is enough to bring smiles to our faces. Vacation plans involve towering TBR piles, and the best gift in the world is a new book. But what is it about reading that we love so much? We’ve collected some of our favorite quotes answering just that, articulating better than we ever could the joys of reading. Enjoy, and let us know your favorite @NEAarts on Twitter!

"What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die." — Anne Lamott

 

To read is to voyage through time. — Carl Sagan
Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind. — Toni Morrison

 

Reading and thoughtfulness and openness are the best way, I should think, to begin to address the richness that is in each of us. — Julia Alvarez
A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people—people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book. — E.B. White

 

A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships. ― Jorge Luis Borges
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

 

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading. ― William Styron
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become. ― Ursula K. LeGuin

 

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