To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries. — A.C. Grayling
Reading is a way to take in the difficult situations and understand them. The whole point of reading a book in class is to have discussion about what these situations are like. — Julia Alvarez
Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days. — Richard Wright
The importance of reading, for me, is that it allows you to dream. — Eric Ripert
Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over. — Neil Gaiman
Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms. — Angela Carter
Reading literature is a way of reaching back to something bigger and older and different. — Wendy Lesser
Reflecting on these complex relationships between reader and story, fiction and life, can constitute a form of therapy against the sleep of reason, which generates monsters. — Umberto Eco
Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere. — Mary Schmich
reading a good book in silence is like eating chocolate for the rest of your life and never getting fat. — Becca Fitzpatrick
Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are. — Mason Cooley
Short Reading Fiction Quotes
To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts. — Georg C. Lichtenberg
The elasticity of imagination and compassion is what writing and reading promote. — Julia Alvarez
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. — John Berger
I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me. — Jonathan Lethem
This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue. — Carol Shields
Top 10 Reading Fiction Quotes
All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction. — Steve Almond
Simply put, Redeeming Love is the most powerful work of fiction you will ever read. — Liz Curtis Higgs
As a child, I read science fiction, but from the very beginnings of my reading for pleasure, I read a lot of non-fictional history, particularly historical biography. — Norman Spinrad
It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly. — C. J. Cherryh
The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home. — John Y. Campbell
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
I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil. — Flannery O'Connor
I read recipes the same way I read science fiction. I get to the end and say to myself "well, that's not going to happen — Rita Rudner
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. — Ernest Hemingway
We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something. — Orson Scott Card
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your own.
Reading Historical Fiction Quotes
I can't read historical fiction because I find the real thing so much more interesting. — Antonia Fraser
For me, writing historical fiction is all about finding a balance between reading, traveling, looking, imagining, and dreaming. — Anthony Doerr
I read mostly historical fiction - lots of stuff set in ancient Rome and ancient Greece. I also liked sci-fi and fantasy: David Gemmell, Raymond E. Feist. It's a nice escape from the world. As much as I do love real-life stories, they can often make you hurt in a way I'd rather not hurt. — Henry Cavill
Reading is dreaming with open eyes.
Science fiction is like a blender - you can put in any historical experience and take influences from everything you see, read or experience. — Joss Whedon
After all, that's why we read historical fiction-to be transported to another time, and to be astonished at ancient people's lives and traditions, just as they would probably be astonished at ours. — Michelle Moran
When I was growing up I loved reading historical fiction, but too often it was about males; or, if it was about females, they were girls who were going to grow up to be famous like Betsy Ross, Clara Barton, or Harriet Tubman. No one ever wrote about plain, normal, everyday girls. — Kathryn Lasky
Why do I write historical fiction? Johnny Tremain, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Island of the Blue Dolphins-that's why. I'll never forget how it felt to read those books. I want to write books with the same power to transport readers into another time and place. — Jennifer Armstrong
I read a ton of fiction - historical, contemporary, literary, commercial, I love it all. — Megan Chance
Anyway I read more contemporary poetry than contemporary fiction so my mind goes first to a kind of crass "conceptualism" that repeats vanguard gestures of the past minus the politics and historical context. — Ben Lerner
I do believe that in every age there are people whose consciousness transcends their own time and that these people, whether fictional or historical, are those with whom we most closely identify and those about whom we most enjoy reading. — Erica Jong
Reading Science Fiction Quotes
Beyond that, I seem to be compelled to write science fiction, rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature, both fiction and nonfiction. — Joan D. Vinge
Oh, I’m nerdy about science fiction and fantasy and graphic novels and reading, and I’m nerdy about board games. My favorite board game is a board game I’m working on right now. It’s a game of Napoleonic era naval warfare, and it’s going to be fun. — Billy Campbell
It's better to read first rate science fiction than second rate science-it's a lot more fun, and no more likely to be wrong. — Martin Rees
The novels that get praised in the NY Review of Books aren't worth reading. Ninety-seven percent of science fiction is adolescent rubbish, but good science fiction is the best and only literature of our times. — Robert Anton Wilson
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. — Arthur C. Clarke
In the past, it was only in science fiction novels that you could read about ordinary people being able to go to space... But you laid the foundation for space tourism. — Nursultan Nazarbayev
Before I was reading science fiction, I read Hemingway. Farewell to Arms was my first adult novel that said not everything ends well. It was one of those times where reading has meant a great deal to me, in terms of my development - an insight came from that book. — Robert Reed
I got to spend all of my time every day at work reading and editing papers about cutting-edge technical research and getting paid for it. Then I'd go home at night and turn what I learned into science fiction stories. — Kevin J. Anderson
Even if you only want to write science fiction, you should also read mysteries, poetry, mainstream literature, history, biography, philosophy, and science. — Walter Jon Williams
I do enjoy reading some science fiction. — Colin Farrell
Non Fiction Reading Quotes
Expand the definition of 'reading' to include non-fiction, humor, graphic novels, magazines, action adventure, and, yes, even websites. It's the pleasure of reading that counts; the focus will naturally broaden. A boy won't read shark books forever. — Jon Scieszka
[I like to read] spiritual books, non-fiction, fiction, I have my moods. — MC Lyte
I have two pairs of reading glasses. One pair is for reading fiction, the other for non-fiction. I've read the Bible twice wearing each pair, and it's the same. — Steven Wright
Read everything. Read fiction and non-fiction, read hot best sellers and the classics you never got around to in college. — Jennifer Weiner
I read very widely, both non-fiction and fiction, so I don't think there's a single writer who influences me. — Peter Benchley
I was looking to do something non-fiction because I had done a strip, 'My Mom Was a Schizophrenic.' I really enjoyed the process of doing that strip, despite its subject matter. To do it I'd had to do a lot of research and reading and I figured I'd like to do that again. — Chester Brown
I like to read biographies of authors that I love, like Richard Yates. I also like to see what non-fiction authors are out there. My bible is Something Happened. It's one of the greatest books I've ever read. But if I don't read a Dostoevsky soon I'm going to kill myself. — Richard Lewis
If you read a book that's fiction and you get caught in the characters and the plot, and swept away, really, by the fiction of it - by the non-reality - you sometimes wind up changing your reality as well. Often, when the last page is turned, it will haunt you. — Jodi Picoult
I read a lot; fiction and non-fiction are the mediums I find most edifying and inspiring. I watch movies and listen to music and take lots and lots of walks. Nature is a nice reset button for me, it's how I get a lot of thinking done. — Carrie Brownstein
Before I started writing, I'd never read much fiction. I was more interested in non-fiction. I'm taking the same approach to theatre: I can operate from a position of ignorance and make up my own rules instead of being bound by customs and practice. — Irvine Welsh
The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done. — Jean Piaget
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are. — John Wooden
Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way. — Martin Luther King
Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage. — Winston Churchill
Reading a novel in which all characters illustrate patience, hard work, chastity, and delayed gratification could be a pretty dull experience. — Thomas Perry
I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels that really are short stories filled with a lot of helium. — Lynn Abbey
Novels aren’t just happy escapes; they are slivers of people’s souls, nailed to the pages, dripping ink from veins of wood pulp. Reading the right one at the right time can make all the difference. — Brandon Sanderson
She liked Victorian novels. They were the only kind of novel you could read while eating an apple. — Stella Gibbons
Oh, how few find time for prayer! There is time for everything else, time to sleep and time to eat, time to read the newspaper and the novel, time to visit friends, time for everything else under the sun, but-no time for prayer, the most important of all things, the one great essential! — Oswald J. Smith
Within my own life, I read all the beloved novels by lamps of vegetable oil; I saw the Standard Oil invading my own village, I saw gas lamps in the Chinese shops in Shanghai; and I saw their elimination by electric lights. — Hu Shih
Life is like reading a novel or running a marathon. It’s not so much about reaching a goal but rather about the journey itself and the experiences along the way. — Edward O. Thorp
I began writing 'Matterhorn' in 1975 and for more than 30 years I kept working on my novel in my spare time, unable to get an agent or publisher to even read the manuscript. — Karl Marlantes
Oh, that sound? I'm in the hot tub, reading a novel. — Jane Smiley
I used to go with my parents and loved it, I was in school plays, and I started reading plays before I started reading novels. I'll defend it to the hilt. When theatre is good it is fabulous. — Patrick Marber
Fiction Novels Quotes
My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky. — Alan Moore
I'm working on a nonfiction book on Nepal and a novel about diasporas. — Louise Brown
Babylon 5 is probably the biggest, most ambitious television science fiction series ever made. It's one big novel told over five years with 110 different stories told within it. — Bill Mumy
My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying. — Anton Chekhov
The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. — William Faulkner
If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor. — Edgar Rice Burroughs
Good fiction must be entertaining- but what makes fiction special- and True- is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a larger message. — Jerry B. Jenkins
I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within. — Gustave Flaubert
I never think about genre when I work. I've written fantasy, science fiction, supernatural fiction, and am now working on a suspense novel. Genres are mostly useful as a marketing tool, and to help booksellers known where to shelve a book. — Elizabeth Hand
Reading Literature Quotes
Don’t just teach your children to read… Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything. — George Carlin
We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement. — B. F. Skinner
If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us. — Franz Kafka
I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books. — Gary Paulsen
That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch. — Jhumpa Lahiri
There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature. — P. G. Wodehouse
I will tell you something about stories . . . They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death. — Leslie Marmon Silko
My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection. — Ryszard Kapuscinski
A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the pa — Ambrose Bierce
I studied English literature in the honors program, which means that you had to take courses in various centuries. You had to start with Old English, Middle English, and work your way toward the modern. I figured if I did that it would force me to read some of the things I might not read on my own. — Jeffrey Eugenides
Reading Stories Quotes
Don’t read success stories, you will only get a message. Read failure stories, you will get some ideas to get success. — Abdul Kalam
We take it for granted we know the whole story - We judge a book by its cover and read what we want between selected lines. — Axl Rose
No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters. — George Eliot
I'd like to do the young cadet thing again for sure, but that's why I wanted to do this, to see if I could do it. I took the scenes out of the script and put them together and read them as one little arc, story and that seemed to work. — Scott Speedman
So take seriously the story that God has given you to live. It’s time to read your own life, because your story is the one that could set us all ablaze. — Dan B. Allender
Yet as I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog. — Philip Yancey
As the child approaches a new text he is entitled to an introduction so that when he reads, the gist of the... story can provide some guide for a fluent reading. — Marie Clay
I loved ghost stories, creaky staircases, stormy nights. If it guaranteed nightmares I read it by flashlight, after midnight. — Lisa Gardner
The Bible is endlessly interesting because it is God's story, and God by nature is himself endlessly interesting. The Bible is an ever-flowing fountain. The more you read it, the more you find its truth and beauty to be inexhaustible. — D. A. Carson
Tell me how you read and I'll tell you who you are. — Martin Heidegger
There are a lot of good books around. People don't read any more. It's a sad state of affairs. Reading's the only thing that allows you to use your imagination. When you watch films it's someone else's vision, isn't it? — Lemmy Kilmister
My Alma mater was books, a good library... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity. — Malcolm X
Reading good books implants good ideas in the mind, develops good aspirations, and leads to the cultivation of good friends. — Mas Oyama
Only God knows the good that can come about by reading one good Catholic book. — John Bosco
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents. — Arthur Schopenhauer
My alma mater was books, a good library. — Malcolm X
Keep good company, read good books, love good things and cultivate soul and body as faithfully as you can — Louisa May Alcott
Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours. — Jane Kenyon
He who destroys a good book kills reason itself. — John Milton
Fiction Stories Quotes
Better to have a small role in God's story than to cast yourself as the lead in your own fiction. — LeCrae
The world is full of fictional characters looking for their stories — Diane Arbus
I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book', but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable. — Martin Amis
Crime fiction makes money. It may be harder for writers to get published, but crime is doing better than most of what we like to call CanLit. It's elementary, plot-driven, character-rich story-telling at its best. — Linwood Barclay
I could write historical fiction, or science fiction, or a mystery but since I find it fascinating to research the clues of some little know period and develop a story based on that, I will probably continue to do it. — Jean M. Auel
A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam. — Frederik Pohl
It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check. — Erle Stanley Gardner
Short fiction seems more targeted - hand grenades of ideas, if you will. When they work, they hit, they explode, and you never forget them. Long fiction feels more like atmosphere: it's a lot smokier and less defined. — Paolo Bacigalupi
Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true. — Ulysses S. Grant
People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it. — Harlan Ellison
My platform has been to reach reluctant readers. And one of the best ways I found to motivate them is to connect them with reading that interests them, to expand the definition of reading to include humor, science fiction/fantasy, nonfiction, graphic novels, wordless books, audio books and comic books. — Jon Scieszka
Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we've never met, living lives we couldn't possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character's skin. — Ann Patchett
Geisha because when I was living in Japan, I met a fellow whose mother was a geisha, and I thought that was kind of fascinating and ended up reading about the subject just about the same time I was getting interested in writing fiction. — Arthur Golden
I spent much of my prison time reading. I must have read over 200 large books, mostly fictional stories about the American pioneers, the Vikings, Mafia, etc. As long as I was engrossed in a book, I was not in prison. Reading was my escape. — Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr.
For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time. — Louis L'Amour
The reason that truth is stranger than fiction is that fiction has to have a rational thread running through it in order to be believable, whereas reality may be totally irrational. — Sydney J. Harris
For the best part of my childhood I visited the local library three or four times a week, hunching in the stacks on a foam rubber stool and devouring children's fiction, classics, salacious thrillers, horror and sci-fi, books about cinema and origami and natural history, to the point where my parents encouraged me to read a little less. — David Nicholls
Life is stranger than fiction. It's nice to have stuff that people don't know about. And it helps when you read a bad review. You can go, "This guy doesn't have me figured out." There's more mystery to you than they understand. — Dolph Lundgren
Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home. — John W. Campbell
Wesley Stace has always been the only genuinely gifted fiction writer who also happens to be a rock star, but Wonderkid is the book he was born to write. And if you prefer your novels brazen, poignant and hilarious, as I do, you were born to read it. Like a great show, this will stay with you long after the last cymbal crash and power strum. — Sam Lipsyte
I had never known the pleasure of reading, of exploring the recesses of the soul, of letting myself be carried away by imagination, beauty, and the mystery of fiction and language. For me all those things were born with that novel. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon
I got a degree in sociology, didn't read much fiction in college, and I was a pretty political, left-wing type of guy. I wanted to do some kind of work in social change and make things better for the poor man, and I was very romantic and passionate about it. — Andre Dubus
Usually I read several books at a time - old books, new books, fiction, nonfiction, verse, anything - and when the bedside heap of a dozen volumes or so has dwindled to two or three, which generally happens by the end of one week, I accumulate another pile. — Vladimir Nabokov
A writer often wants to change a reader’s perception about the world, which is a political act. But we have to work through character, so helping the reader to feel close to fictional characters is the gate through which we have to usher the reader. — Caryl Phillips
I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature, culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford, and they'd never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction! — Philip Pullman
Like everybody at that age, I read an awful lot of pulp fiction. But at the same time, I also read quite a bit of history and read that as much for pleasure as part of a curriculum. — John Hume
People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries. — Denise Mina
Well meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading - do not discourage children from reading because you feel they're reading the wrong thing. There is no such thing as the wrong thing to be reading and no bad fiction for kids. — Neil Gaiman
We all have a lot of people inside us, yet we get to live only one life. Fiction lets us slip into someone else’s skin, so to speak. That’s why we read novels, and also why we write them - to experience more life, through imagination. — Steven Saylor
Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story. — F. Scott Fitzgerald
For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written — heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world. — Angela Carter
With the Black Company series Glen Cook single-handedly changed the face of fantasy—something a lot of people didn’t notice and maybe still don’t. He brought the story down to a human level, dispensing with the cliché archetypes of princes, kings, and evil sorcerers. Reading his stuff was like reading Vietnam War fiction on peyote. — Steven Erikson
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of reading fiction quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about reading fiction to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of reading fiction quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
