“You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free.”

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

“I think you can read a dozen different books and not learn a single thing about writing. Good writers don't read, they study books. They pick the plots apart and the sentences apart. And part of studying is copying. Reading is great and every writer should read, but reading alone isn't enough to learn what you need to learn...”

“Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.”

“Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it.”

“Look," said Janet, irritated, "if the thing you liked best to do in the world was read, and somebody offered to pay you room and board and give you a liberal arts degree if you would just read for four years, wouldn't you do it?”