Reading Novels Quotes

• The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

  Jane Austen

  Inspirational, Funny, Stupid

  Jane Austen (2005). “Jane Austen: 8 Books in 1”, p.460, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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  You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

  Harper Lee

  Powerful, Positivity, Sunshine

  Harold Bloom, Harper Lee (2010). “Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird”, p.81, Infobase Publishing

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• What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

  J. D. Salinger

  Book, Reading, Memorable

  Catcher in the Rye (1951) ch. 3

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• When you read a novel, you know what to expect because you've been reading novels for a long time.

  Alejandro Zambra

  Reading, Long, Novel

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Fiction allows us to see the world from the point of view of someone else and there has been quite a lot of neurological research that shows reading novels is actually good for you. It embeds you in society and makes you think about other people. People are certainly better at all sorts of things if they can hold a novel in their heads. It is quite a skill, but if you can't do it then you're missing out on something in life. I think you can tell, when you meet someone, whether they read novels or not. There is some little hollowness if they don't.

  Philip Hensher

  Reading, Thinking, Views

  "Philip Hensher: a life in writing" by Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. March 30, 2012.

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• the slight sense of degeneracy induced by reading novels before luncheon

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Reading, Novel

  Elizabeth Bowen (2012). “The Hotel: A Novel”, p.110, University of Chicago Press

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• I like reading novels because it provides insight into human behavior.

  Claire Danes

  Reading, Behavior, Insight

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• When you get inside a literary novel you feel that the author, more often than not, just doesn't know enough about things. They haven't been around enough - novelists never go anywhere. Once I discovered true books about real things - books like 'How To Run a Company' - I stopped reading novels.

  Peter York

  Running, Real, Reading

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• I can't be reading novels when I'm writing a novel, because somebody's voice creeps in. The hardest thing to do is keep the tone and your attitude over the course of a year or however long it takes.But when I'm writing short stories, which I will be doing shortly, I can read anything I like.

  T.C. Boyle

  Attitude, Reading, Writing

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• To keep an active mind, I find that reading novels is really good.

  Alison Pill

  Reading, Mind, Novel

  Interview with Sheila Heti, believermag.com. February 1, 2013.

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• Most of humanity gets by without reading novels or poetry, and no one would deny the richness of their thoughts.

  Ian Mcewan

  Reading, Humanity, Deny

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• I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have from reading novels. The understatements in the tenor saxophone of Lester Young, the crystal, haunting, forever searching sounds of John Coltrane, and the softness and violence of Count Basie's big band - all have fired my imagination as much as anything in literature.

  Ernest Gaines

  Reading, Writing, Imagination

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• Radio is the medium that most closely approximates the experience of reading. As a novelist, I find it very exciting to be able to reach people who might not ever pick up one of my books, either because they can't afford it (as is often the case in Latin America), or because they just don't have the habit of reading novels.

  Daniel Alarcon

  Latin, Book, Reading

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things.

  Dana Spiotta

  Reading, Impact, Stories

  "Dana Spiotta on living the creative life". Interview with Jacket Copy, latimesblogs.latimes.com. August 3, 2011.

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• I never could read Foucault. I find philosophy tedious. All of my knowledge comes from reading novels and some history. I read Being and Nothingness and realized that I remembered absolutely nothing when I finished it. I used to go to the library every day and read every day for eight hours. I’d dropped out of high school and had to teach myself. I read Sartre without any background. I just forced myself and I learned nothing.

  Michael Gira

  Philosophy, Reading, School

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• 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

  Reading, School, Play

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• I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.

  Ernest Gaines

  Reading, Writing, People

  Ernest J. Gaines (2007). “Mozart and Leadbelly”, p.27, Vintage

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• If your heart takes more pleasure in reading novels, or watching TV, or going to the movies, or talking to friends, rather than just sitting alone with God and embracing Him, sharing His cares and His burdens, weeping and rejoicing with Him, then how are you going to handle forever and ever in His presence? You'd be bored to tears in heaven, if you're not ecstatic about God now!

  Keith Green

  Reading, Heart, Godly

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• Sylvie's knowledge, like Izzie's, was random yet far-ranging, 'The sign that one has acquired one's learning from reading novels rather than an education.

  Kate Atkinson

  Reading, Novel

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• Plainly, such an approach does not exclude other ways of trying to comprehend the world. Someone committed to it (as I am) can consistently believe (as I do) that we learn much more of human interest about how people think and feel and act by reading novels or studying history than from all of naturalistic psychology, and perhaps always will; similarly, the arts may offer appreciation of the heavens to which astrophysics cannot aspire.

  Noam Chomsky

  Appreciation, Art, Reading

  4 Copy quote

• My only passions were books and music. As you might guess, I led a lonely life… Not that I knew what I wanted in life - I didn’t. I loved reading novels to distraction, but didn’t write well enough to be a novelist; being an editor or a critic was out, too, since my tastes ran to the extremes. Novels should be for pure personal enjoyment, I decided, not part of your work or study. That’s why I didn’t study literature

  Haruki Murakami

  Lonely, Book, Reading

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• I can imagine no greater bliss than to lie about, reading novels all day.

  Julia Quinn

  Lying, Reading, Imagine

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• I like reading novels because it provides insight into human behavior. I am really interested in feelings and think they are what define us as a species. When you really get it right in acting, it's an act of empathy. You feel less distant from others, and that is really exciting.

  Claire Danes

  Reading, Thinking, Empathy

  4 Copy quote