“I think the happiness of a reader is beyond that of a writer, for a reader need feel no trouble, no anxiety: he is merely out for happiness. And happiness, when you are a reader, is frequent.” – Jorge Luis Borges (The Craft of Verse)
“Readers and writers are united in their need for solitude, in their pursuit of substance in a time of ever-increasing evanescence: in their reach inward, via print, for a way out of loneliness.” – Jonathan Franzen (“Perchance to Dream,” Harper’s, April 1996; reprinted as “Why Bother?” in How to To Be Alone)
“The greater part of a writer’s life is spent reading.” – Samuel Johnson
“‘Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson (Society and Solitude, 1870)
“To read means to borrow; to create out of one’s readings is paying off one’s debts.” – George Christoph Lichtenberg
“The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it’s also full of fourth-rate readers.” – Stan Barstow (1989)
“Whether they think about it or not, novelists…are preserving a community of writers and readers, and the way in which members of this community recognize each other is that nothing in the world seems simple to them.” – Jonathan Franzen (“Perchance to Dream,” Harper’s, April 1966; reprinted as “Why Bother?” in How to Be Alone)
“Writing and reading are not all that distinct for a writer. Both exercises require being alert and ready for unaccountable beauty, for the intricateness or simple elegance of the writer’s imagination, for the world that imagination evokes. Both require being mindful of the places where imagination sabotages itself, locks its own gates, pollutes its vision. Writing and reading mean being aware of the writer’s notions of risk and safety, the serene achievement of, or sweaty fight for, meaning and ‘response-ability.’” – Toni Morrison (Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, 1992)
“Writers generally enjoy reading, just as readers feel they might have been writers.” – Holbrook Jackson (1874-1948)
“Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.” – Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989)
