“Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.”

“You ordinary people who read and do not write, who 'like to read' and know nothing of the sufferings of writers, how fortunate you are!”

“Why should I want what's good for me?' Beatrice asked him, smiling. 'Is that what you want for yourself - only what's good for you?”

“Whoever's reading this, if anyone is reading it: does it matter that our old selves are lost to us as surely as the past is lost, or is it enough to know yes we lived then, and we are living now, and the connection must be there? Like a river hundreds of miles long exists both at its source and at its mouth, simultaneously?”

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.”

“The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me.”

“And we can read - there is always the prospect of escape, through books.""Books are not a means of 'escape', Meta! Books are a means of knowledge, and of learning how to cope with the future.”