Reading Quotes
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I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.
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I was in my mid-teens when someone gave me a copy of 'Pears Encyclopaedia of Myth and Legends' as a birthday present. It sat on my shelves for many months before I looked at it. When I did, I couldn't stop reading it.
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I subscribe to the theory that reading a book is similar to walking a trail, and I'm most comfortable walking when I can see where I'm going and where I've been. When I'm reading a printed book, the weight of the pages I've turned gives me a sense of how far I've come.
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I wasn't that bothered with school; I was too mad into horses. But I liked reading and was good enough at English and always liked music.
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One of the saddest things about publishing is how quickly it ages what it touches. The frenzy involved in getting books on shelves, and in putting the word out that they're there, moves at a speed that is not the speed of writing, let alone of reading.
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Reading was and still is my real joy.
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I took the first James Kelman novel, 'The Bus Conductor Hines', home to my dad. I thought, 'My dad will like this; it's written in Scots.' But my dad said: 'I can't read that.' He was reading James Bond and John le Carre. That was part of what attracted me to crime - the idea of getting a wide audience.
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I have sort of weaned myself off of reading my own reviews, which is a constant struggle.
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Reading develops cognitive skills. It trains our minds to think critically and to question what you are told. This is why dictators censor or ban books. It's why it was illegal to teach slaves to read. It's why girls in developing countries have acid thrown in their faces when they walk to school.
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I love my friends and family, but I also love it when they can't find me and I can spend all day reading or walking all alone, in silence, eight thousand miles away from everyone. All alone and unreachable in a foreign country is one my most favorite possible things to be.
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All writers want to know that someone is reading their work, taking them seriously. It provides a kind of moral support.
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But reading is not idleness?it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental.
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The 'Law & Order' audition was so last-minute. I was already in a shabby suit, the journey was a complete disaster, my train stopped early, it was raining, and I had to show the cabbie the way... I rushed in apologising, gave this terrible reading, and ended up telling my whole journey to them. I must have bored them to tears.
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When I spend a lot of time reading, discussing, or thinking about an area, I'll often really appreciate why a strong viewpoint is true and come to very firm conclusions. But if I am later exposed to a strong opposing view, I frequently find this countervailing view persuasive as well.
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But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called - called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.
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I like reading reviews. If they're clearly hating on you, I try not to read that deeply. But if they really are trying to understand, it's interesting.
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I can't see how I'd learn to be a better actor from reading reviews.
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If a big person invests time in reading, kids learn reading is important, the child is important, words are important, stories are important.
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Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.
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As a kid, I always liked reading stories where I had a power-projection fantasy. I wanted to be inside of a story where I had power and influence, was going to rise to power, was going to somehow influence my society.
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I've been reading ghost stories ever since I could read. I'm immensely curious about ghosts and UFOs and all that stuff, but I'm a very hard-headed person.
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Reading a newspaper is like reading someone's letters, as opposed to a biography or a history. The writer really does not know what will happen. A novelist needs to feel what that is like.
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The one constant in my life has been my love of books: reading them, thinking about them, talking about them, holding them, turning people on to new ones.
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I grew up as an only child and my mother was also an only child, so we were both very passionate about reading. I think I passed that on to my daughter, who went plowing through 'Harry Potter' and every other book possible!
