“From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.”

“Mother, I am young. Mother, I am just eighteen. I am strong. I will work hard, Mother. But I do not want this child to grow up just to work hard. What must I do, mother, what must I do to make a different world for her? How do I start?""The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read. Every day you must read one page from some good book to your child. Every day this must be until the child learns to read. Then she must read every day, I know this is the secret”

“I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down."[Letter to J. Beauchamp Jones, August 8, 1839]”

“I spent the rest of the day in someone else's story. The rare moments that I put the book down, my own pain returned in burning stabs.”

“I suppose that it was inevitable that my word-base broadened. I could now for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading in my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of my books with a wedge...Months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.”

“I dropped down on the cushion beside Lea and picked up the book she'd been reading. Turning the book over, my brows flew up as I got an eyeful of the hottie on the cover. "Wait. Is this book about aliens?"She snatched it back from me. "Yes.""Really?""But they're hot aliens." She tapped on the guy's face with one thin finger. "And he can be my ET any day.”