17 Quotes About Reading That Will Inspire Every Bookworm

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Published Jul 11, 2022

People who love to read *really* love to read, by which we mean bookworms are typically very passionate about the written word. It makes sense, then, that there are a whole bunch of poignant, inspirational and downright lovely quotes about reading, like the 17 below from luminaries like Maya Angelou, Oprah and Ursula K. Le Guin.

1. “Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read. Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life. Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself.” — Roxane Gay

2. “The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

3. “Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work.” — Khaled Hosseini

4. “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

5. “Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” — Anna Quindlen

6. “Books were my path to personal freedom.” — Oprah

7. “A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.” — Abraham Lincoln

8. “It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” — James Baldwin

9. “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies…The man who never reads lives only one.” — George R.R. Martin

10. “That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.” — Jhumpa Lahiri

11. “To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” — W. Somerset Maugham

12. “A book is a dream you hold in your hands.” — Neil Gaiman

13. “Think before you speak. Read before you think.” — Fran Lebowitz

14. “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” — Stephen King

15. “I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” — Jorge Luis Borges

16. “Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

17. “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

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